


The Eastbourne Legacy

by oxymoronic



Series: The Eastbourne Supremacy [3]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Elections, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Original Character(s), Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-14 11:45:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: It's election time in Westminster again, and Fergus Williams, characteristically, is panicking; Adam Kenyon, across the floor and masterminding his way up through the Labour ranks, has more on his mind than Eastbourne's polling stats. The resulting disaster is no less cataclysmic for its inevitability.





	1. 2015

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm not saying that wolfhalls reblogging a dumb tumblr meme made me pick this up after a year and dust it off and finish it...... but that is exactly what happened tbh. thank you so much for doing so, i never would've gone back to this otherwise!!  
>    
>  i know this is hideously overdue but i really hope you enjoy it anyway. someone asked what would happen to the Inbetweeners in the 2015 election and this is my vague attempt to fulfil that; that said, politics stopped really being funny for me about three years ago, and although i did try to weave some into this it's definitely less prominent than it has been in previous parts. this also gets quite grim in places (to quote the ineffable wittertainment, there's a lot of shawshank before the redemption) but do know that Adam/Fergus is the endgame and that it has a happy ending.  
>    
>  for the sublime, the wonderful, the light of my life wishwellingtons. i v. much hope you enjoy.  
>    
>  **casting note #1:** in my head, Simon is [Matthew Goode](https://mardousthinkingaboutshoes.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/ho.jpg). if you don't know who Douglas is, cf the inimitable [YGHTSS](https://archiveofourown.org/works/310046).

_you're an emotional wreck_  
_you don't know who you are_  
_you never say what you mean_

 

“I’m only asking,” Helen says, over the rattling clatter of crockery and the raucous slurps of the coffee machine. “I’m not bothered if you’re not interested.”

Adam hasn’t the slightest idea what she’s asked him. Sharing lunches in the selfsame café which had proved so unhelpful in Fergus’ aborted leadership campaign has become a habit, and so has Adam squinting mal-tempered down at his phone as it refuses to co-operate with the shitty wifi. Cabinet reshuffle imminent, JB’s lot have gone into a huddle, and Fergus has been emailing him every four seconds for the last twenty minutes to helpfully inform him he doesn’t know anything.

Adam glances up at her guiltily, and she rolls her eyes. “No news?” she asks, flatly.

He shakes his head. “Your lot must be loving this,” he mutters, and sighs. “Look – I’d better – it’s that or end up in A&E nursing Fergus’ burst spleen – ”

She isn’t listening to him, which isn’t unusual, but when he glances up he sees she’s pale and worried, and he’d previously thought Helen would eat a rat alive before she lost her temper. He asks the question, but she can’t seem to bring herself to answer him; wordlessly, she hands over her phone instead. He spots the familiar brick-red of the BBC – glances down, and then –

_DoSAC Senior Minister: Liz Cavendish_

_DoSAC Junior Minister: Markus Singh_

Shit, Adam thinks, distantly. And then, immediately, _Fergus_.

 

  

Adam silently resolves to sign up to at least four religions for the sheer, unbelievable fact he doesn’t bump into either Phil or Peter on re-entering HQ. The halls are quiet, and hushed – there’s nothing quite like a reshuffle to inspire ergonomic architecture to emulate a mausoleum – and Adam feels horribly like someone’s died. The Queen, maybe, would inspire this sort of silent rêverie. Or Malcolm Tucker.

Fergus is sat on his desk. The desk. The desk, in their office, in Fergus’ office, in Markus Singh’s office. He looks grey.

“Apparently,” Fergus says slowly, coldly, “I’m too close to Michael’s administration. All that mess with the coalition – too much – ill-sentiment. New blood required. A fresh start for the electorate.” He snorts, scours his face with his hand. “She was so fucking _nice_ about it as well. At least Michael would have gloated.”

“Fergus,” he tries, and Fergus flinches. “It’s – it doesn’t matter.” Fergus gives him a look, and for a moment Adam can’t continue. “She’s a tit, alright? We’ll – ” He gestures, vaguely. “ – regroup. She’s a tit,” he says again, with confidence, and it does at least inspire Fergus to smile.

“No more Terri,” Fergus says, slowly, with a growing grin. “No more _Phil_.”

“No more DoSAC,” Adam agrees, with tangible relief, and holds out his hand. “Let’s go home.”

  

 

Home means Fergus’; the Chiswick house that is, to all intents, theirs. Adam is pacing in the garden, fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket with one hand and holding his phone against his ear with the other. _“I promise I didn’t know,”_ Helen says tinnily into his ear. She’s snuck away from a reshuffle party to field his crisis call. _“I would’ve warned you – ”_

“Yeah, don’t worry, I know.” He scours his face with his hand. “Do you think we should – ?”

 _“Dunno,”_ she says, after a pause. _“It might be better if we did. Or –_ ”

“It’s opportune,” Adam agrees, and rubs his eyes. “But Fergus...”

 _“Yeah, don’t worry, I know. You handle it,”_ she adds. _“Just tell me what to do.”_

Adam ends the call. Fergus, from what he can tell, is still sat grey-faced at the dining table, where Adam had left him. “Helen,” Adam says by way of explanation, slipping back in through the kitchen door. This demands further explanation, he knows, but he pauses, glances Fergus over, wonders if, truly, there’d ever be a good time to tell him. He should wait til morning, at least –

“Is it an option?” Fergus asks, and Adam’s stomach abruptly drops.

“It is for me,” Adam says, slowly. “But not – not for you.”

On reflection, Adam thinks, he could probably spot the precise moment the light went out in Fergus’ eyes. “Right,” Fergus says, precise and measured. “That’s – right.”

“It’s logical,” Adam continues, feigning obliviousness but overcome by a slow, rising panic, “and we’d been – for a while, and with the – timing and everything – ”

“Yes,” Fergus agrees, blankly, still staring at his hands. “It’s – very well-scheduled.” He gestures, vaguely, manages a curt “Bed,” and Adam concedes the idea in a mumble, steps back to let him pass. Fergus pauses in the doorway, turns briefly to rest his fingers against Adam’s chest. When he speaks, his voice sounds somehow – odd, awkward, distorted, strangled in a manner Adam can’t quite fathom. He won’t meet Adam’s eye. “And we’re – ?”

“Of course,” Adam replies, before he can even form the question. The resounding slump of Fergus’ shoulders hits him like a kick to the teeth; he hadn’t even entertained the notion, and it now makes him dizzy with dread. “Always.”

  

 

Margaret Beauford, the product of an unhappy marriage, a colonialist upbringing, and a Cambridge education, gives off the distinct impression of practiced upper-class inbreeding alongside her trim figure, wispy hair, and beetle eyes. Despite being MP for Enfield North, she’s Helen Hatley’s latest project, and her good family, clean record, and general likeability are working greatly in their favour. That Adam dislikes her is neither important nor helpful; she is politically sapient, competent, and conversant in a way Fergus never was, and, crucially, her party isn’t fundamentally unelectable.

She seems equally unimpressed with his credentials as she squints thin-lipped at him over a smelly cup of chai, but Helen has evidently convinced her of his fervour if not his clout, and she has already conceded with some difficulty that he did good work at DoSAC. “And that, in itself, is something,” she admits, glancing knowingly at Helen.

“Do you just have a thing for terrifying women?” Adam asks blandly as they then share a cigarette, hunkered by the bins round the back of Opposition HQ. The look Helen slides him advises him not to push it.

“Please,” she mutters archly. “You’re not going to tell me Nicola was terrifying.”

“God. I’d forgotten. Nicola Murray, the universal career blip of politics,” he murmurs, and Helen snorts unbecomingly. “Terrifyingly bad, maybe. She your choice, then? For the new PM?”

“Who, Margaret? God, no, with a face like that.” Helen takes a long, slow drag, taps off the ash. “Cabinet material, definitely. Education, maybe. Or Defra, at a push. How’s Fergus?”

“Visiting his mum,” Adam says through a yawn, and dares Helen to laugh. “He’ll be alright. He likes Eastbourne. DoSAC was a bit of an – ”

“ – accident?” she guesses, and Adam shrugs a concession. “When is it not, really.” She finishes the cigarette and thrusts out a hand, triumphant. “Welcome to the party, Mr Kenyon,” she says, eyebrow raised, and grins. “With you on board, we might even win the election.”

  

 

With his head in the airing cupboard, sprawled out clumsily on his hands and knees, Fergus is for the hundredth time that month painfully aware of quite how much of his life was until quite recently administrated by Adam Kenyon.

“It’s never the first place you look,” confirms the floating, sympathetic voice of the clipboard-equipped man from South East Water. Fergus bangs his head on the lowest shelf on exit. “Any chance of a cuppa?”

The milk’s off, too, and Fergus tries and fails to experiment with double cream for approximately twelve seconds before consigning himself to the rain-drenched trudge to the local corner shop. Squinting miserably at the labels and still dripping slightly from the rain, Fergus does what he always does in times of deep misery, and phones Adam.

“I’m having literally the shittest day,” he says. “Tell me you’re more miserable.”

Adam, less than a hundred miles away and en route to a ShadCab fiscal policy review that may or may not feature Olly Reeder, cannot yet give Fergus that particular satisfaction. _“En route to be gently fellated by the Miller brigade,”_ he confesses, as Fergus gloomily watches the tight-fisted shopkeeper keenly and precisely count out his change. _“Then Margaret wants to take me out for muffins.”_

“Like a deleted scene from King Lear,” Fergus mutters sourly as he squints out the door into the sheeting rain. “Where’s the stopcock, by the way? Do I mean stopcock? Is that even a word?”

 _“You mean water meter,”_ Adam says, with the familiar saintly patience. _“Cupboard next to the kitchen sink.”_

Of course, on return, there’s no sign of the meter man, and Fergus dumps the sopping bags grumpily on the counter. “Muffins,” he repeats, in a tone of deep discontent. “I hope Olly’s there, and I hope he gives you that _smile_.”

 _“Bastard,”_ Adam says, affectionately. Then the predictable: _“Listen –_ ”

Fergus scowls. “Thought as much, given that we’d been speaking for a whole three minutes – ”

 _“Don’t be a dick, alright?”_ There’s a pause, and Fergus imagines him rubbing crossly at his eyes. _“I’ll see you on the weekend.”_

He sounds tired, Fergus thinks, as he inwardly chastises himself for being an arse and sticks on the kettle. It’s barely scraping Tuesday afternoon, and he’s due in a matter of hours to play tennis with children at a community centre, Adam’s last hurrah of making him look like a real – albeit ludicrous – person. Here, in this flat, with the lazy tap and the damp and the vague nostalgia-haze, Fergus misses him more than he can stand. But the workings of Westminster have never seen fit to cease in the face of his life before, and he sees no reason why they should start now; and so he stands, and sighs, and scowls fitfully at the driving rain.

  

 

For the first time in Fergus’ short-lived athletic life, his shorts are far too big. Beaming to himself in the concrete-clad, damp dressing room, he texts Adam this vital update before surrendering his phone to the creaky locker and resigning himself to the pack of baying mothers muttering in the main hall. Fergus is trying to convince them that his latest brainchild, toddler tennis lessons, is an example of solid, universally beneficial Lib Dem policy, but stepping out into the draughty hall with his bare legs and elastic sweatbands round his wrist he feels very ginger.

After a bout of humiliation at the hands of an ex-tennis pro, he’s doing meet-and-greets with the mums by a table festooned in multi-coloured, sugar-free squash when the subject of Adam, inevitably, rumbles to the surface. “What happened to that other boy?” asks Sandra, mug of Twinings organic blend in one hand and an unlit fag balanced in the other. “The nice one.”

“Works for Labour now,” Fergus says absently, clutching his own mug and staring off across the noisy hall. “He’ll be here at the weekend.”

“Shame,” she answers mildly, and the look of what-on-earth-did-you-damn-well-do sliding across her face is familiar, so familiar – and Fergus wants to say nothing, alright, he bloody well left _me_ –

“All done,” says Chanise, brightly, appearing at his elbow, and the twinge of relief is disappointingly small. “Unless you fancy another photo?”

Not on your fucking life, he thinks, but manages (to Adam’s credit) to string together something of greater coherence. He rings Adam again from the car, but there’s no answer, and he resigns himself to a solitary evening of Question Time and stalking the self-appointed ShadCab via Twitter, looking for Adam’s hand.

 

  

There’s no sign of cessation in the bitter, cold whistle of the January wind along the train platform, and Fergus scowls irritably underneath his oversized woollen coat, trying and failing to cheer himself that it isn’t – for once – actually raining. With interminable inevitability, Adam’s train is late, and Fergus is sure he had two hands’ worth of fingers when he arrived half an hour previously but is now struggling to find them. Then Adam appears, scowl equally thick and clothes a rumpled mess, and it’s as if the very world breathes out around him. As ever, then, there’s nothing else but this and him.

There’s something about train stations, Fergus thinks, which turns him into a hopeless sentimental. He feels as though there should be steam blaring and soft violins playing when they touch, even if it is just Adam thumping into his shoulder in a failed attempt to hoist over the duffel bag. “Journey alright?” Fergus asks.

Adam pulls a face. “Been standing since Croydon,” Adam replies gloomily, fiddling in his jacket for his phone.

Fergus frowns. “Thought you had a seat booked?”

“Mum with a buggy,” he admits, putting his phone to his ear, and Fergus snorts.

“My hero,” he murmurs under his breath, and Adam hits him on the arm just as the cabbie answers.

It’s started raining by the time they get back to the flat, resulting in an awkward useless shuffle as they try and get themselves and Adam’s apparently-expanding wardrobe safely inside; then Adam settles on the leather sofa and Fergus flicks the kettle on, and suddenly the damp, thin-walled flat begins to feel like home again. “I’m glad you’re here,” Fergus says, handing over a mug, “if only because the first question everyone keeps bloody asking me is ‘where’s Adam?’.”

At this, Adam looks insufferably smug. “Can’t say the same, mate,” he answers, and Fergus resists the urge to kick him. “Did you tell your mum I can’t come tomorrow, by the way?”

Fergus’ stomach lurches dully. “What?”

Adam winces. “Shit. I was sure I’d told you. Helen wants me there to pre-prep the Monday briefing, so I’d best be on a train by three at the latest, you know what travelling on a Sunday is like.” He seems, then, to notice something in Fergus’ frozen expression, and adds, “Hey, I don’t want to, you know? It’s just – ”

“ – yeah, no, sure, I’ll ring.” Fergus shakes himself, flicks him a smile. “Is Helen okay?”

“Fine, yeah. She’s taken Emma to her mum’s for the weekend, I’m bracing myself for the full disclosure on Monday.” He pulls a face which Fergus is sure translates to _lesbians_. “It’s weird, working for Margaret, though. Somehow less – ”

“Hectic?”

“I was going to say panicked,” Adam finishes, grinning slightly. “She’s crap at squash, though. And there’s no Phil to torment.”

Fergus stares at him. “You’ve been playing squash with Margaret?”

“It was a metaphor,” Adam says, dryly. “Not sure if they covered that in your kindergarten of a university.”

“Dick,” Fergus mutters, without feeling.

“I would rather be here, you know,” Adam says then, rather quickly, but when Fergus looks over at him in surprise, he’s doggedly staring at his feet. “It’s not like I – ”

“I know, love,” Fergus interrupts, and watches the word wash over him, the little shudder up his spine. You’d think, five years down the line, there wouldn’t still be this lurching uncertainty between them, but they just can’t quite seem to chase it. “Mum’ll be sorry to miss you.”

Adam smiles briefly, runs his hand through his hair. “I’ll buy her some new ceramic monstrosity to make up for it,” he promises sincerely, and Fergus can’t help but crack a smile.

  

 

After Fergus’ pitiful attempts at dinner, their evening devolves predictably into a drink in the _Herring_ , just so the locals don’t think Fergus is holding Adam hostage. Fergus has made it his business of late to be around at least once a week, but even now their reception on arrival is lukewarm at best, a few nods and waves mostly heading in Adam’s direction.

On the television on the farthest wall, Fergus notices with a miserable lurch that Michael is making a tit of himself on the news for the hundredth time. “There’s nothing you can do about him,” Adam says quietly in Fergus’ ear, and he jumps, unaware he’d rambled to a stop and become captivated by the white, sweaty face of his party’s ex-leader. “He’s just – low-hanging fruit.”

The sour-faced and smug interviewer from the BBC seems to wholeheartedly agree. He sits absentmindedly at a table as Adam does the rounds, then accepts a half-pint in gloomy silence, his vestigial good mood for the weekend now wholly killed. Adam kicks him under the table, mocks his scowl, and Fergus rolls his eyes.

“We should get away,” Adam says, taking a drink. “Once this is all done with, of course. Somewhere hot and very inaccessible to the British press. For your birthday, maybe?”

Fergus can’t very much imagine a future beyond the looming election, but agrees in general with the escapist sentiment. “Yours is sooner,” he replies. “But if we do, you’re paying,” he adds, archly. “I’ve seen what you Labour lot get paid. It’s ridiculous.”

Adam grins. “You’re the one employed at the expense at the British taxpayer.” Balanced on the table beside Fergus’ hand, his well-worn phone chirps trilly. “Anything interesting?” Adam asks, as with weary resignation Fergus picks it up and squints myopically at the screen.

“Louise,” Fergus says. “Polling stats. Cheerful, as ever,” he adds, putting it away. “Yours is quiet.”

“Turned it off,” Adam says offhandedly, picking up his drink, and Fergus can’t help but stare. “I’m here, yeah?” he continues, quietly. “With you.”

Fergus’ mouth is suddenly very dry. “Drink up, then,” he murmurs, and flushes slightly at the sharp look in Adam’s eye.

 

  

God, he forgets, he always forgets, the jolting warmth of it, the shock of it, the feeling of Adam’s fingers against his skin. In that second, in that moment, there’s nothing, no anger, no politics, no resentment between them. Just this, and him.

Always, he thinks, digging his fingers into Adam’s back and gasping out his name against his neck. Fuck. _Adam_.

He’s smoking again. Fergus catches the smell of it, loosened by his sweat, and it sends an unhappy lurch through his gut, pulls him free from the dizzying headspace that had grown between them. Above, Adam is close – he can tell from the lurching stuttering of his hips, the crease between his eyes, the frantic rhythm of his hand, building and shaking between them – and sure enough – his mouth bows open and he comes against him, shaking, all listing breath and trembling hands. Fergus, suddenly, has never felt less aroused in his entire life.

Adam rolls off him, looks over, and notices. “You didn’t – ?”

“Don’t,” Fergus interrupts on instinct, rolling clear of the bed, and knows from the brief flash of fury that runs across Adam’s face it’s absolutely the wrong thing to say. He fetches a towel from the bathroom, hangs in the doorway on his return. He can’t bring himself to sit again, or meet Adam’s eye.

“Fucking hell, Fergus,” Adam says, eventually, scouring his face with his hand. “I didn’t drop thirty quid on train fares to watch you fail to have an orgasm.”

Fergus shoots him a look. “Charming.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. I just wish you’d – ”

“It’s been fucking horrible, alright?” he interrupts, suddenly, peevishly. “Is that it? Is that what you want me to say?”

A pause. “I don’t want your life to be horrible, Fergus,” Adam says, slowly, evenly.

“I miss you,” Fergus mutters. “I’m sorry to be a tit, but I do, alright?”

“You’re not a tit,” Adam replies, almost automatically, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s not exactly been sunshine and roses on my end too, you know.”

Fergus sits down and, after a moment, passes Adam the towel. “Sorry. I didn’t – ask.”

“For fuck’s sake, stop apologising, I feel like a fucking _Doctor Who_ villain.” He makes use of the towel, drops it unceremoniously on the floor. “I meant what I said earlier, you know. It won’t be like this forever.”

“I know. I just – ”

Adam nods. “I know. Shall we just – ?”

Fergus seizes the chance gratefully. “Yeah, jesus, I’m knackered,” he says, and allows himself to crawl into bed, the solid weight and warmth of Adam’s chest against his back. He hears Adam’s breath slow and even, but he himself can’t shake his nerves again, can’t sink comfortably into sleep.

 

  

Sunday morning greets them both with lazy inevitability twinned with predictable thin sunshine. Insipid, but making a damn good effort, and Fergus takes it as a good omen as he reads the proffered _Observer_ and wolfs down the toast Adam had seen fit to make. Their mutual resentment of the public press has always been a long-standing method of exoneration, and Adam’s not only highlighted all of the bad grammar, but has also written snide comments in the margins.

Fergus is reading an angrily-circled _less_ underneath Adam’s infuriated _fewer!_ for the fourth time when Adam himself reappears round the doorway, unmistakeably fully-dressed. He looks apologetic before he even opens his mouth. “Crisis call,” he explains, trying and failing to flatten his hair, and Fergus does employ a good thirty seconds on consciously not feeling resentful. “I’d better get back.”

“I should probably go soon, too,” he admits, staring gloomily at the clock.

“I will be sorry to miss it, you know,” Adam says, and Fergus can’t acknowledge much past the fact Adam is wearing a tie on a Sunday for what must be the first time in weeks. “I’ll see you on Wednesday, though, yeah? The FCO?”

Fergus makes a face. “I’d forgotten. Good luck with Helen,” he adds, and accepts a kiss just as the doorbell rings.

After what feels like four hundred hours trapped in a tiny metal tube surrounded by baying children, Adam’s sole consolation on arriving in Victoria is that Helen looks as fundamentally irritated to be in the dimly-lit coffee shop as he is. He buys the strongest coffee he can, tries and fails not to wince at the price, and settles into the chair opposite, wedged into the window.

“How was your weekend?” Adam asks, before they begin, and when Helen shoots him a look he rolls his eyes. “The rest of it, I mean.”

“Interesting,” she says. “Mum and Em got on like a fucking house on fire, of course. Yours?”

Adam tries, and fails, to think of a coherent explanation, before settling on vague-handwaving and, “Fergus.” It seems to do the trick. “It’s just – ” He pauses, runs his hand through his hair. “I mean. How do you deal? The – not being...?”

Helen thoughtfully regards him in silence for a while. “It’s different, I think,” she says, eventually. “We were never as, well, you know.” She waves a hand. “Together, constantly. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, or fun,” she adds, trailing her coffee foam with her spoon. “But fuck,” she concludes with a grin, “if Emma and Olly could make it work for that long, I’m sure we can.”

  

 

Sometimes Fergus believes the world of Westminster is entirely worthwhile just for the sight of Adam, slumped in a doorway, wearing black tie and a scowl that makes him look like a pinup girl. They hadn’t made it more than a metre through the door before someone had thrown wine all down Fergus’ front – white, not red, and entirely not his fault – and he’d taken refuge in the bathroom to mop ineffectually and air himself off with the hand-drier.

“I can still see your nipples,” Adam says calmly, and Fergus glares.

“One day,” he mutters, acquiescing to Adam’s small smile and trailing him out of the men’s toilet, “One _fucking_ day – ”

“ _Adam_! Hallo there!” A voice like ten-day-old-stilton and jaffa cakes, and Fergus, convinced his night could not get any worse, tries and fails to muster his gameface to tackle the beaming smile of Julius Nicholson. Fergus eyes his chubby waistline and viciously notices that political retirement seem to be treating him well. With him is the sort of posh, imperturbable, irritatingly handsome man he seems to regularly covet the attention of, and who if you were unaware of his short, charming, and ruthless husband you would think him to have prurient designs on. “Douglas has just gone to get us some wines. Have you been here long?”

Fergus says “Yes,” at exactly the same moment that Adam says “No,” and a short, awkward pause necessarily follows as Fergus tries and fails to think of a way to dispel the obvious but mortifying assumption they’d been having a quickie in the bathroom.

Julius, the consummate socialite, smiles unflappably and indicates his companion. “Have you met Simon? Charming fellow – works for Judy over at CABA, you know.”

“Pleasure,” Simon says, shaking each of their hands, as Fergus stares at the floor and tries not to die of sheer embarrassment. The niceties exchanged, they part ways with the necessary _must get on_ s, _lovely evening for it_ s and Fergus immediately makes the obligatory beeline to the buffet.

Together, plates in hand, they scope the room. “Jesus,” Adam murmurs, glancing at him with a grin. “Talk about scraping the barrel.” Fergus, eyes on the pack of press hacks, flinches as Adam brushes his hand, and beside him Adam goes perfectly still. “What, shock news,” Adam mutters, after a moment, “cohabiting couple dare to touch at public event – ”

“Don’t,” Fergus says, quietly. “Not here.”

“Right,” Adam replies, slowly, evenly. He puts down his plate. “I’ll be – I just – need a minute.”

“To ring Helen?” Fergus mutters, peevish and under-breath.

Beside him, Adam turns livid. “You’re acting like a fucking child, Fergus,” he says, his voice even and perfectly calm, and with a brief smile to the approaching group he flees in the direction of the garden.

“Everything alright?” one asks – a tall, handsome one. Fergus is certain he knows him, but has, predictably, already forgotten his name. “No matter, it’s a difficult time, I’m sure. We – met? Earlier?”

“Julius,” Fergus says slowly, and then blanches slightly. “The _bathroom_ – ”

“No assumptions here, I assure you,” the man replies, smiling, and holds out his hand. “Shall we try again? It’s Simon. Simon Rowntree.”

Fergus tries, and fails, to master his own name, and instead goes for a stuttered, “Pleasure.”

“I remember you from DoSAC,” Simon says, reaching past him for something small and pastry-based. “Good work, I say. Rutland a bit of a bad egg, isn’t she, to shaft you like that.”

Fergus, very aware she’s still the leader of his party, mumbles noncommittally. “CABA?” he tries, instead, in his usual futile attempt at small talk.

“Yes, just moved over there. It was Julius who got me in, of course – known him since school.” Another small, rubbery thing is acquired and devoured, and Fergus can’t help but think that Adam’s been gone a rather long time. “It’s a great organisation. Not here tonight on business, though I must say – ”

“I’m not out,” Fergus blurts, suddenly, and finds himself staring at his hands. “I’m not out. And Adam – Adam hates it.”

“Right,” Simon says, slowly.

Fergus’ stomach rolls in sudden, clarity-sharpened embarrassment. “Sorry. That was – you asked, and I – ”

“No, no, by all means. I understand,” he adds, after a moment, and Fergus gets the distant impression that he really does.

“There’s enough,” Fergus continues, slightly thrown, “what with the election, and he’s not – and anyway, it’s a bit – ”

“Career-defining?” Simon says, suddenly, and Fergus glances at him, surprised. “That was my issue. And my life was far less public than yours is.” Fergus catches sight of Adam across the room; Simon follows his gaze. “You’ll muddle through,” he says, and Fergus finds him smiling. “I’m sure of it.”

Adam’s lurking by the French doors, scowl back in place and eyes on his phone, and something in Fergus’ chest lurches at the sight. He excuses himself from the buffet – itself a remarkable act – and walks over to him, shaky wineglass still in hand. “Sorry,” he says, quietly.

Adam shrugs. “Simon seems nice,” he says, the latest in a long line of argument-avoiding non-sequiturs, and Fergus has to stamp down a wave of irritation.

“He is,” Fergus agrees, slowly. “He had – good advice.”

Adam snorts. “Christ alive,” he mutters, “does Julius Nicholson know any straight men?”, and Fergus can’t help but grin.

Adam’s eyes are back on his phone, and Fergus’ smile falls flat. “I don’t – don’t tell me off,” says Fergus, “but do we have to stay? I want to go home,” he adds, standing closer. “Please. Let’s go home?”

Adam gives him a level look. “Half an hour,” he replies, smiling slightly, “and talk to at least three people. Then we can go home.”

  

 

They make it fourteen minutes, and Adam is scrambled on a crisis call. Fergus is mortifyingly, unforgivably taken pity on by Julius Nicholson, and spends the night under his wing, trying not to make eye contact with Simon – who is really very handsome – or imply any manner of flirtation with Julius to Douglas, a squinting constant at his husband’s elbow. He gets drunk, drunker than he’d like, and concedes to a taxi home, if only to avoid the unnecessary headline.

Gone midnight, and still no sign of Adam. He puts the telly on, can’t find anything but crap, turns it off. The drink wears off, eventually, as he’s thumbing through Twitter and squinting to read the headlines – and, finally, lights in the drive, a key in the door. Adam looks exhausted, world-weary and irritated, and the expression brings back a rush of nostalgia to Fergus’ already-dizzy head. “You didn’t have to wait up,” Adam says, for all that he looks grateful of the fact.

“I wanted to,” Fergus replies. “And I didn’t know – ” – when I’d see you next, he thinks, but, for diplomacy’s sake, doesn’t voice it. “Is everything – ?”

“Helen’s on it,” Adam says through a yawn. “Press found out about the au pair thing.” He scours his face with his hand. “Felt weird, being this side of a night-desk.”

“Julius cornered me after you left,” Fergus says, absently. “Spent all night telling me all about how we should give piano lessons to postmen.”

“Christ alive,” Adam murmurs. He sits down beside him on the sofa, checks the time on his phone, and groans slightly. “God, it’s not the same,” he mumbles, biting back a yawn. “Margaret’s nice, and Helen’s nice, but they’re not you.”

For a moment, Fergus can barely look at him. “Adam,” he says, and Adam kisses him, soft and light and slow. He’s still a little dizzy with the drink, flushed and warm and heady. He moves to sit across him, but Adam shoves him back, slides his hand down his chest.

“Not like last time,” he murmurs, “I want to watch you come,” and Fergus promptly swallows his own tongue. Jesus, he thinks, as Adam undoes his fly, and then, _Adam_ –

With the drink, and the dizziness, and the desperation, he barely lasts five minutes before he’s arching up into Adam’s fist, swearing and gasping and slurring Adam’s name, toes curled and fingers clenched hard in Adam’s hair – and then, sharply, succumbing to it, coming into Adam’s hand, shivering and bucking with the aftershocks. “God, you’re a bastard,” Fergus mumbles, and Adam grins, smugly, and straddles him. Fergus kisses him lazily, unable to summon the mental competence required to deal with the front of Adam’s trousers, but bats away his hand to repay the favour, jerks him slowly until Adam’s shaking against his chest. “Always, yeah?” he says, suddenly, as he runs his thumb over the head. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I might believe it if you moved your hand a bit faster,” Adam replies prissily, gasping against his neck, and then moans, low and ragged, when he does. “Fuck, _fuck_ , that, please, that,” he says, and comes, hips bucking and mumbling nonsense into Fergus’ hair.

Their breathing slows, and Adam stills. God, I love him, Fergus thinks, hazily, and almost as if reading his mind, Adam kisses his neck. Fergus trails a hand through Adam’s hair, allows himself a yawn, thinks absently of their distant bed. “Thank god I closed the curtains,” Fergus murmurs as his fingers draw circles at the small of Adam’s back, and Adam snorts out a laugh against his neck.

 

 

On a bright, blustery day in March, their usual haphazard breakfast is interrupted succinctly by the announcement of the general election. Fergus, toast halfway to his mouth and still half-expecting the ministerial car, hears a distant siren go off in his head like a car alarm.

Beside him, Adam puts down his mug. “You’ll have to move down to Eastbourne,” Adam says, and _you_ instead of _we_ drags roughly at Fergus’ chest. He’s already checking his phone for messages from Helen.

“You should stay here, while I’m gone,” Fergus says absently, putting down his toast, his appetite suddenly vanished.

Adam’s eyes are on his phone, but he shakes his head. “It’s further than the flat. Thanks, though.” He drops an absent kiss on Fergus’ head, bounds away up the stairs, already fielding Helen’s frantic call; Fergus can hear the low _huzz_ of Chanise phoning him, but he can’t bring himself to answer it. Chance of rain, Fergus registers, distantly. Really.

“Fergus?” Adam’s stood in the kitchen doorway, duffel over one shoulder, and Fergus thinks he might vomit. “Christ, you’re pale. Have you spoken to Chanise?”

Fergus shakes his head. He can’t stop staring at the duffel bag, at the horrible, cemented fact of it –

“It’ll be alright,” Adam says, voice drifting in from somewhere. “They all love you down there.” When he glances over, Adam’s pulling a face, eyes on his phone. “Whereas – jesus, I’m being dispatched to stabbing central to soundcheck a brewery – ”

“Adam,” Fergus says, faintly.

“Yes. Shit. Sorry.” He puts away his phone, crosses the room to kiss him, and it’s hideously, unmistakeably, a goodbye. “I’ll come visit,” he promises, smiling. “Not this weekend – there’s a thing – but soon, okay?”

Another kiss – then he’s out the door, on the phone, hurrying crablike to the local tube. In the bright-lit kitchen, with Adam’s half-drunk mug nestled beside his own, Fergus feels more than a little abandoned.

 

 

Eastbourne station is, as ever, entirely unchanged. Chanise meets him off the four-thirty with a bright smile and a wave, and after a journey of baying children and scowling mothers he’s more than pleased to see her. “Must be weird,” she says, taking pity on his wobbly state and hoisting his bag with ease. “Doing all this again, I mean.”

Fergus concedes the point with a half-hearted shrug. “Pub?”

Chanise slides him a look. “Office,” she says, archly. “We have got some serious strategising to do.”

It is, of course, a familiar sight – all peeling blue paint and the noise of the seafront and the smell of the chip-shop down below. Fergus stares gloomily at the pile of post which literally has his name on it and sinks into the ergonomic chair, trying and failing to ignore the fact there’s now only one other seat positioned in front of his desk. Chanise occupies it brusquely, shoving a tattered piece of paper across what remains of the clear space. Polling stats, Fergus realises – and, immediately, his stomach drops. “What the _fuck_?”

“I tried to warn you,” Chanise says, bluntly. “As far as they’re concerned, you’ve not been here, you’ve been pissing around in Westminster. Michael is on every sodding news channel from here to Inverness and Marie is – Marie is fucking golden, you’ve no fucking idea.”

“She’s nice,” Fergus says, weakly. “She sent me and Adam fruit when that idiot threw a brick through my front window.”

“She’s local,” Chanise continues, settling back in her chair. “Born and bred. And she sounds it, too, whereas you’ve always sounded like you fell out of a tree in Prince Philip’s back garden. Sorry,” she adds, after a moment. “Ex-teacher – kid with a nearly-fatal illness – big into schools and hospitals. Family-oriented. Good in front of the camera. And, of course, not connected to Michael fucking Langdale.”

“This is shit,” Fergus says faintly, after a pause. “This is totally shit.”

“A bit,” she concedes, slowly. “But it’s not – it’s not hopeless, Fergus. You’ve been through hopeless.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, weakly. He can’t look up from his desk. He can’t help but think, dimly, how much all of that had been Adam.

As if reading his mind, Chanise huffs out a sigh, and says, “No Adam?”

“No Adam,” Fergus confirms, voice still thin. She gives him a look of deep pity he’s powerless to avoid.

 

  

“I know what you want me to say,” Helen says, and Adam, whose attention had been firmly on the blobby nose of Nick from the _Travel Show_ , glances at her guiltily. She rolls her eyes. “About Olly, and Dan.”

“Oh,” Adam says, shifting a little and rubbing wearily at his eyes. “Yeah, that.”

“Yes,” Helen echoes archly, “ _that_. And you know I’m with you on it. But we really can’t pull anything so close to an election.” She glances nervously around the café, drumming her nails against the side of her mug. “We’re a little bit fucked either way, really. Either we lose the election – ” She suppresses a wince. “ – and the two of them go down faster than shit through a goose, or we win the election and they’re fucking untouchable.”

“Then it’s a long game,” Adam says, tiredly. “In both scenarios. In either case, Margaret’s no party leader. Who did you have in mind?”

“Tim?” Helen says, slowly. “He does look a bit like a sad LEGO man, though. Diana, if it weren’t for the hair.”

“Or Sarah, if it weren’t for the casual racism,” Adam agrees through a yawn. “Mind you, that seems to be going down quite well these days.”

Helen shoots him a look. “Anyway. There’s no reason we can’t be tactical, but there’s no way we can make any sort of move before May.” She sips at her coffee, conscience apparently content. “How’s Fergus?”

“How’s Emma?” Adam counters, eyes straying back to the muted television screen.

“Good,” Helen replies. “Polling stats are making for interesting dinnertime conversation.” Adam’s gone decidedly grey; when Helen glances at the screen, the universal, sweaty face of Michael Langdale greets her, fumbling his way through his fiftieth interview, and she can’t help but grin. “You must be well rid,” she says, and notes immediately that Adam doesn’t share the smile.

“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “Definitely.”

 

  

The disastrous record of the ex-Minister for Education and a winning smile has seen Fergus gain some headway at the local comprehensive, along with three whole days camping in Friston Forest with a bunch of unhappy fourteen-year-olds, whose misery originated from their lack of phone signal rather than his unwanted presence. Chanise grimly declares it pointless to hope for any quarter at the Student Union – though he does of course acquiesce to an interview, it mainly concerns why he himself was clearly personally responsible for the rise in tuition fees – but is optimistic about his chances with the parents of the primaries, given his lifelong affinity with knee-high children.

Two weeks down the line, and their polling stats are slowly creeping up. Their latest battle – attempting to steer the consultation between W&P and the local farmers’ association – has amounted to little more than four broken biscuits, six harried phonecalls, and two stroppy storm-outs, and Fergus, in his desperation, has emailed Julius Nicholson. His kind and typically effusive reply deeply regrets his inability to step in, but includes the phone number of Simon Rowntree, who along with a considerable quantity of personal experience also happens to know just about everyone who’s ever worked in the pensions sector.

This email naturally leads to Fergus drinking three and a half cups of tea (incorporating spillages), staring at the ceiling for half an hour, and trying hopelessly to solve a cryptic crossword whilst Chanise is out at lunch in a desperate attempt at procrastination – until she returns, wild-eyed and jabbing a finger of fury in the direction of the telephone.

“It’s a Sunday,” Fergus half-wails, but this earns him no reprieve.

“So leave a message,” she says, and that, it seems, is that.

Settling in his office chair and staring dumbly out of the nearby window, Fergus, sweaty-fingered with nerves, taps the number into his phone. It seems to ring for an unceasing age, until finally, a crackle of static, the hint of a swear word, and then he’s greeted by a slightly harried _“Hallo?”_

“It’s Fergus,” Fergus says, nervously. “Fergus Williams. We met at the – ”

_“Oh, yes! Sorry, I was out in the garden – hell of a time repotting azaleas – what can I do for you, sir?”_

Good god, Fergus thinks dumbly, he’s calling me sir. “We’re having a bit of a time with the W&P lot – Julius thought you might be able to lend a hand.”

_“Of course – who are you dealing with? Sharon? No, hang on, I bet it’s Denise.”_

“Yes,” Fergus replies, collecting a great deal of deep relief from the way he almost spits her name. “She’s being a bit – ”

_“Not a problem. I’ll ring her up tomorrow.”_

Fergus visibly slumps in his chair. “Thank you,” he says, and means it. “God, I owe you – ”

_“Don’t mention it. You’ve got enough on your hands without her menopausal posturing. Buy me a drink next time you’re in London and we’ll call it even.”_

Fergus’ mouth flickers into a grin. “Deal.”

 _“Best of luck,”_ Simon says, and Fergus, glancing over at Chanise in the poky, cold office, thinks even with all the favours in the world they’re going to need it.

  

 

With the farmers’ protests now conceivably in hand, unusually, unbelievably, Chanise allows him to go home for Sunday evening. Home, though, only means a night in alone in his freezing Eastbourne flat with _Antiques Roadshow_ and a Tesco Finest ready meal; it says a lot about his life at present that he considers this enormous luxury.

Filo parcels and tenderstem broccoli balanced on a tray, Fergus settles on the enormous sofa, and rings Adam. Adam, however, seems to have other plans, and after having been unceremoniously dumped into Adam’s voicemail four consecutive times, Fergus decides even this level of pitiful rejection is beneath him and calls his mother, instead.

 _“Adam wasn’t answering again, then,”_ Diane says, once he cheerfully says his name.

Fergus rolls his eyes. “Sorry. I know I’m rubbish. There is an election, in my defence.”

 _“I had noticed,”_ Diane replies, over the rasp of her lighter flare. _“All I’m saying is that I’m your mother, and I don’t want it to be News 24 that’s telling me you’re not dead.”_

“Yes, well, hello, definitively not dead, apparently against the better judgement of the electorate,” Fergus says, darkly. “How’s Dad?”

_“I left him watching Top Gear with the sound off. It would be nice to see you in person this side of Christmas, you know.”_

“I know,” Fergus says quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I promise. We’ll be round as soon as my livelihood is no longer at stake.”

Fergus had entertained a glimmer of hope that he might discover a missed call after hanging up on his mother; but in this, predictably, he is defeated. He eats half a cheesecake in front of Fiona Bruce and tries not to think about risotto spoons, squash racquets, and the quiet muttered sound of his own name.

  

 

With eight days to go, the latest Eastbourne polling statistics fundamentally and unequivocally inform their hectic little office that Fergus Williams has lost.

“Shit,” Chanise says, in a small voice, as Fergus stares blankly out of the nearby window and cannot think of a single word. “ _Christ_.”

Two thousand votes, Fergus thinks, dimly. I have eight days to find two thousand votes.

“I’m calling Adam,” says Chanise, and this time, miracle of miracles, Adam picks up.

 _“I can’t come this side of the weekend,”_ Adam’s saying into his ear, and Fergus is struggling to attach meaning to the words. _“I’m sorry, love, but I can’t – you know I would, don’t you? Do some door-to-doors, and I’ll – Monday, I promi- Tuesday, no later than Tuesday. Listen – I have to – ”_

“Adam,” Fergus says, bleakly.

 _“It’s Michael, love, it isn’t you,”_ Adam says, and hangs up.

Chanise, weary-eyed but mouth grim, reappears at his side with a box of leaflets and his raincoat. “Come on,” she says, mustering a smile, and holds out her hand. “Bring it.”

  

 

Adam’s vomited out of the three pm Tuesday train, and the following thirty-six hours are to Fergus a total, unmemorable blur. He remembers, distantly, a dead arm from a snatched nap on the sofa in his office and the taste of takeaway food; the smiling face of Marie Cotsworth and struggling to pronounce the word anti-institutional; Adam’s hand against his chest and a sadness in his eyes, the desperate likes of which he’s never seen before. Then they’re standing on a train platform for Adam to catch the early-morning train, and it’s hard to tell which of the two of them looks closer to collapse. The polls open in just under an hour, and Adam, apparently, cannot stay.

“You’ll do alright,” Adam says tiredly, with a smile. “Remember last time we didn’t even think we’d get this far.”

Fergus weakly echoes it. They’re waiting for the platform to be announced; he can’t help but antisocially wish for some great calamity on the line. Something, anything, to make Adam stay. Above them, the orange screen flickers into life; Adam leans in to kiss him goodbye, pauses, pulls away. You never know, Fergus supposes, glancing wearily around the empty station for the sight of lurking hacks. Adam’s already picked up his bag. “I love you,” Fergus says, oddly, thickly, and beside him, Adam goes still.

“I know,” Adam quietly replies. “I’ll speak to you soon, alright?” he adds, and with a final smile, heads off in the direction of London, of Labour, of home.

  

 

“Hey,” Helen says, quietly, gently, but it’s her dropping her bag onto the desk which makes Adam lurch awake, peer bleary-eyed around the office in mild alarm. “God, you been here all night?”

Adam shakes his head, rubbing at his tired eyes. “Eastbourne,” he explains. “Fergus’ stats took a wobble.”

Helen frowns. “This close? Is he going to be alright?”

Adam shrug-nods in reply, tugs the paper out of her bag and starts to scan the headlines. “It’ll be close, but it was last time, so. Heard anything from our lord and saviour?”

Helen snorts. “What, Dan? God, no. I don’t think he’s said anything to me since 2007.” She yawns extensively into the back of her hand. “I never know what to do on election day,” she says, absently, scanning the room. “Other than vote, of course.”

Adam finishes with the _Guardian_ , reaches tiredly over for _The Times._ “Westminster walkabout. They’ll all be going into huddles, even this early on. We’d best find out who and what.”

“Alright, Vic Mackey,” Helen says, yawning again. “Lead on.”

  

             

“Adam,” Helen says, and it’s the way she says it, that cluttered tug of quiet dread, that means she instantly commands his whole attention. Before now, she hasn’t spoken to him in at least half an hour – or possibly longer, given how much of the past twelve hours he’s spent staring in a messy panic at the tiny screen of his phone. When Adam looks up he finds it’s the television she’s ruled by, that familiar red-tickertape twinned inexorably with a haggard-looking reporter, and between the flashing stats he picks out two words: Exit Poll.

His stomach drops. The numbers swim slowly into focus, and he thinks, instantly, of Fergus.

“He’ll be alright,” Adam says, unthinkingly, and it’s a heartbeat or two later that he remembers Eastbourne is no longer his concern, focuses on the little red box in the corner of the screen. He feels the colour sweep helplessly out of his face. “This is – ”

“Disastrous,” Helen murmurs, looking pale. “Apocalyptic.”

Adam can’t think over the chaotic heartbeat pounding in his ears. “What do we do?” he asks, helplessly, and is more than a little fearful when Helen gives him nothing but a blank, helpless look. “Stop it,” he says, quietly, mostly to himself, and scours his face with his hand. “ _Think_.” If they lose – if they lose – then Miller is unelectable; cannon-fodder; overthrown; and in his place we’ll need –

“I’ll call Sarah, you do Tim,” Helen says beside him, already two steps ahead, and Adam reaches blindly, desperately for his phone. Eyeing the flickering television uneasily as he calculates helplessly what he plans to say, Adam’s mind is dragged into lurching clarity by the understanding that he and Fergus both may have lost their jobs before the night is done.

 

 

From Eastbourne, Adam remembers less the fatalistic dread and more the camaraderie; being sat in that tinny church hall with Fergus, slumped and exhausted but tangibly alight, glaring daggers at the swaggering Tory tosspots across the hall with hope – and his heart – in his hands. Here, now, he can’t think past the panic clogging up his throat. Jobless, friendless, and hopeless, he stares at the rolling blue rumbling its way across the television screen.

Beside him, Helen keeps throwing him anxious looks as she eats Chunky Monkey out of the tub with a fork; it’s all she could find in the interns’ foodbank down the hall. “Please eat something,” she says for the seventh time, waggling the unappetising mess in his direction. “You know what you get like when your blood sugar’s low.”

“Five more minutes,” Adam replies mechanically, staring sightlessly at the screen. She herself is considerably less morbid, having secured a cushy ShadCab post a little after the witching hour; he is still waiting for the results of Enfield North, having doomed himself to becoming Margaret’s aide and having apparently already begged, borrowed, or stolen everything else Westminster has to offer him. Adam looks at the clock, resists the urge to groan as his head falls into his hands. Four forty-one. There’s a sour taste in his mouth like midnight newsdesks and overfried takeaway food.

“Adam,” Helen says quietly, and there’s a seriousness to her voice he recognises and immediately dreads. For a moment he thinks he’s hallucinating – he glances at the screen and thinks he’s seeing Fergus – and then he realises, horribly, that he _is_ , that Eastbourne’s count is in, and every nerve in his body runs ice-cold.

Fergus looks tired, fraught. He should be there, Adam realises, with a sickening jolt. How did he ever think he shouldn’t be?

 _“ – Andrews, Tristram William, United Kingdom Independence Party, six thousand, one hundred and thirty nine,”_ Adam tunes in to hear, and feels instantly, inescapably nauseous. It’s been the same horrific story all night; a hefty chunk of the country’s voice crying out in favour of this bigotry. It’s also votes Fergus can’t afford to lose. _“Cotsworth, Marie Katherine, Conservative Party, twenty thousand, nine hundred and thirty-four votes.”_

Oh god, Adam thinks, as the world begins to fade to grey. Beside him, Helen’s gone very still.

 _“Williams, Fergus David, Liberal Democrats, twenty thousand, two hundred and one_.”

“Oh Adam, I’m so sorry,” Helen says. Hideous and pitying.

Seven hundred votes, Adam thinks, emptily. Seven hundred votes.

 

  

The following six minutes are the longest of his life. Then, at ten to five, news filters through of a victorious Labour gain at Enfield North, and Adam immediately, blindly, runs. His first thought, his only thought, is of Eastbourne, quashing and ignoring the panic in his bones telling him he’s late – too late – that Fergus has _lost_ –

Half five, and the train is all but empty. Haggard-looking journo-types and a few competent businessmen yawning their ways through the first cup of coffee, squinting hazily into the early rising sun. Adam tries and fails to sleep, prevented by doing so as much by the incessant chirping of his pocketed phone as any demons from his conscience; he just about hits a doze when the train reaches Berwick, and he doggedly forces himself back into consciousness, into hope. He’s no use to Fergus otherwise.

HQ is empty; there’s nothing but a sea of blue at the town hall; and with Fergus not answering his phone, Adam wearily resigns himself to a cab fare and collapses into the flat, shuffling through to their bedroom in a daze. He recognises, but doesn’t register, the odd change – a new hanging lamp, a few pictures on the dressing-table. He’s surprised Fergus has had the time to decorate.

It’s still light when he wakes, which he supposes is something. A quick check confirms his phone has buzzed its way into a flat battery on the pillow beside him, and of course he can’t find the fucking charger; it’s so like Fergus to have moved it – probably put it somewhere safe and fucking forgotten about it –

He’s there. In the kitchen. Adam hadn’t heard him come in. For some primal reason, the sight of Fergus fills Adam’s stomach with a low swoop of dread, and he rubs his eyes hard to try and clear some of the fuzziness from his head. Surely Fergus can’t have failed to notice him.

“Hi,” Adam says, slowly, just in case. It’s a thing people say, a safe and neutral thing. Fergus is leant up against the counter, eyes out of the uninspiring mouldy window, and Adam can’t think of a single word to do him justice; haggard, miserable, grey. Every inch of him defeated. “Fergus,” Adam says, and moves towards him – but he stops at once; and not because of a word, or a glare, but a pointed finger. Fergus hasn’t even looked at him.

“Do you know when you were last stood in this room?” Fergus asks, eventually, and Adam flounders desperately for an answer. Fergus snorts, murmurs, “I sure as hell fucking don’t.”

That slow, creeping nausea is rising in Adam’s mouth again. This isn’t – it shouldn’t be. “Fergus, love,” he tries again, and wants to swallows back the words at once when Fergus seems to flinch.

“This was our _home_ ,” Fergus says, and as his voice breaks and wavers, Adam feels something crumple in his chest. “God above, I can’t believe – ”

“We can keep it,” Adam blurts, shaky and desperate. “My salary – ”

“Your _salary_?” Fergus echoes, incredulous and vicious, and Adam knows then with lurching dread he’s reading this all wrong. “Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Adam – ”

“ – okay, then, right, fine, _sorry_ , I thought you meant – ”

“Go on, then,” Fergus interrupts, his voice flat and icy. “Tell me what I meant.”

Adam pauses for breath, briefly pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is daft, Fergus,” he says, exasperated. “You know it doesn’t matter, don’t you? We can still – ”

Something changes in Fergus, then, but not for the better; when Adam trails off, glances over at him, he’s a solid line of pure fury. “I suppose you’ve already made it perfectly clear to me how little my state of employment matters to you,” Fergus says, his voice dangerously steady. “I just didn’t expect you to admit it.”

Adam, having not slept for more than four hours straight in nigh on two months and having not eaten two square meals in a day in longer, finds his temper suddenly, irrevocably snaps. “What the fuck are you talking about, Fergus?”

“You haven’t been here,” Fergus answers, his voice beginning to shake. “You don’t know – ”

 “Wait, hold on,” Adam interrupts, “You’re angry because for three months I dared not to be at your fucking beck and call?”

“I’m angry because this was ours, alright?” Fergus yells outright, shaking slightly with his rage. “This was ours, and it’s fucking gone.” At this, Fergus slumps back against the counter, looking for all the world like a marionette with its strings crudely cut. He’s gone from red-faced fury to a kind of pale grey, and though his eyes are red and sore, he’s clearly beyond crying. “Everything here is gone.”

Adam’s stomach turns to ice. “What do you mean, ‘everything’?”

“I mean _everything_ ,” Fergus replies, the words hard with a deadly finality. It’s only when he meets Adam’s eye with nothing but fury that Adam truly understands.

“Fergus,” Adam says, or tries to say. He’s not sure the word actually gets out.

There’s a long, terrible, unending, achingly awful pause. “I have to go give a speech,” Fergus says quietly, at length. “Don’t be here when I get back.” He pauses, straightens up, visibly hauls himself back into a firm resolve. “You’d better take anything you want keeping,” he adds, turning briefly from the doorway and gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Chanise is chucking the rest.”

 

  

“I’ve never done this before,” Fergus says, handing over the cigarette. Simon lies smiling, naked, and drowsy-eyed beside him. They’re still sprawled across the dirty sheets, a fact which would usually cause Fergus’ slowly sobering mind to dissolve into hysteria, but tonight neither it nor his continued nudity seem to be bothering him. Fergus would like to blame the drink, of which there was actually very little, or the months of imposed chastity, but truly, Simon had merely rung him up with a smile in his voice and asked politely, sympathetically, impossibly, if he’d still like that drink. He made Fergus laugh, and touched him with kindness. It had made Fergus’ heart stutter in a way it hadn’t in months.

“What, not even with Adam?” Simon asks him, dryly.

Fergus throws him a look. “I mean something of this – ”  He gestures, helpless to clarify, between them. “Brevity,” he decides, eventually.

Simon snorts and takes a drag. “Lord, I’m not just a sad rebound, am I? I mean, I don’t mind if I am, I just need the forewarning in order to spend the next fortnight rebuilding my ego.”

“I don’t think you can be a rebound if I wasn’t actually in a relationship.”

Simon squints at him, taps off the ash. “Be fair. He was rather devoted to you, for a time.”

“Do you know,” Fergus says, slowly, “I don’t think I spoke to him for about three weeks prior to the election. He was so convinced that I’d always be at his beck and call that he never sodding well bothered to pick up the phone.”

This, as a conversation killer of huge proportions, instils an awkward silence into the room. Just as Fergus thinks he should probably according to the proper etiquette either pass out or leave, Simon looks at him and says, quietly, “It doesn’t have to be, you know. Us,” he adds. “Brief.”

Fergus glances at him, careful. “That doesn’t seem very fair on you.”

“Look, we like each other, yes?” Simon insists, settling back on his elbows. “You’re not my MP, Fergus. You don’t have to have a five year plan.”

“I’m not anyone’s MP,” Fergus answers gloomily, finishing the cigarette. He looks at Simon, nervous. “I mean – if you’re not averse – ”

“To sex on a regular basis and interesting company?” Simon answers absently, eyeing up the box of Marlboro’s by the bed with a hangdog expression, a mix of hunger and guilt. “We mustn’t make these dreadful things a habit, though. I’ve quit four times already.” He slants Fergus a sly look, amused. “How’s that for a five year plan?” he asks, and Fergus can’t help but smile.


	2. 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **casting note #2** : so i realised when i was writing that i was imagining Damien as [David Dawson](https://www.unitedagents.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/client_single_image/public/thumbnails/image/David%20D.jpg?itok=C-SHg9OV), who you probably won't remember as Affers from the Specials (don't ask shinobi93 about our extended headcanon about that), and i'm going to stick with that as it's still the most accurate i can think of!

_and you keep your mouth shut_  
_and your night stays still_  
_and then you come and call on me_

 

* * *

* * *

 

_OUT AND PROUD IN WESTMINSTER: Balancing politics with the personal in modern activism_

_Mark Renfrew, The Observer_

_One year on from losing his seat in Eastbourne, I spent a charming Saturday afternoon with vocal gay rights activist Fergus Williams in his cushy north London home. Shared with his partner Simon, Fergus is keen to emphasise to me the easy walk to the nearby Heath over a cup of personally-selected Darjeeling – Simon’s favourite, it soon emerges. We drink it sat next to the upright Steinway in their glamorous and very clean living room, a birthday present, I’m told with clear fondness, along with lessons. Fergus Williams has, apparently, always wanted to learn the piano._

_I can’t help but ask if that’s what he’s making time for, now that he’s no longer a slave to the Westminster schedule: yes and no, is my answer. He’s glad to have more time for hobbies and his family, he admits, but regretful that he didn’t spend his time in power making more effective change, and keen to do what he can now. It’s difficult to find a politician bereaved of his position who doesn’t insist that it was the restrictions of the job – and not their own incompetence – that’s responsible for their less-than-impressive record on that front._

_Fergus, admittedly, does have one good excuse that many are lacking; until he first spoke to me about his sexuality eight months ago, he admits openly it was a source of great shame. “I hid who I was,” Fergus says with painful sincerity. “I didn’t think it was possible to be a politician and to be gay without it dictating my life completely. I admired my colleagues who were out, but I didn’t think I would ever find the strength to join them.”_

_It’s a familiar story, if a seemingly surprising one in twenty-first-century Britain. I ask him what changed; his answer is instant and somewhat saccharine. “Simon,” he answers, smiling. “He helped me find my courage. He helped me become – a better version of me.”_

 

* * *

* * *

  

Adam is with Helen when the final count comes in. It feels in that moment like he’s trapped in some sort of awful loop, sat up sleepless in Westminster with Helen beside him, both of them smelling of two-day-old sweat, staring at the BBC brick-red tickertape with absolute, sinking disbelief.

They’d known, with increasingly growing panic, that it was going to be close. But –

“It isn’t – it isn’t binding,” Helen says weakly. “It’s just a consultation.”

Margaret hadn’t even been an MP when the first few referendum Bills began limping through Parliament; he hasn’t, thank Christ, had to spend the intervening months defending her from accusations of limp-wristed Labour Euroscepticism, as Helen very much has with her current charge. Adam has even been grateful for the brief recess of allegations of supposed feuding with their shuffling jumped-up Geography teacher of a party leader which have been his presiding lot to firefight of late.

But he didn’t – none of them thought it would actually _happen_.

There’s no joy in this, no victory. No sense of achievement or admiration. The consequences of their incompetence are suddenly huge, unavoidable, and real. It’s ceased to feel like a game. Balanced on the desk between them, both of their phones begin to buzz. Helen presses her fingers to her temples, sucks in a deep, steadying breath, grabs hers up off the edge and answers it.

Adam lets his ring. He thinks of Emma, undoubtedly extricating herself from the messy huddle around JB, eyeing up the contenders for leadership and chancing her arm with her favourite. She’s probably been strategising every possible scenario, every possible candidate for months. In that moment, the concept seems to him impossibly childish, impossibly cruel.

Helen reappears at his side; she’s assembled her gameface in the intervening time, stabbing at her iPhone screen with a familiar look of competent determination. She smiles at him a little, pats his arm. “Cheer up. It’s not the end of everything, you know.”

“This isn’t just – fucking politics,” Adam says hoarsely. “This is people’s lives, Helen.”

Helen fixes him with a very cold stare. “Hell of a time for you to develop a conscience, given that it’s your bloody lot who got us here to begin with.” Adam isn’t sure whether she means the Mail, or Fergus. “Grow up, stop moping, and answer your fucking phone.” Helen drops hers in an elegantly stylish handbag, combs her fingers through her hair, and gives him a slightly more sympathetic look. “Just – do your fucking job, Adam.”

Adam watches her go. That used to be his line, Adam thinks abjectly at Helen’s retreating back.

 

  

“What an absolute mess,” Simon says idly, eyes closed, stretched out languidly in the early-morning Tuscan sunshine. Fergus, sat at his side under two umbrellas and seven layers of suncream, can’t help but murmur his agreement.

He thumbs through the BBC news app on his phone, a nervous habit which he’s never managed to rid himself of. The rolling Tuscan hills sprawl out lazily around him, the soft play of sunlight on the pool invitingly glints at him, and Fergus finds that what he wants – truly wants – more than anything in that moment is to speak to Adam. To hear Adam say he’ll fix it, that it’s all part of some grand, all-embracing, Tuckeresque plan.

He forces himself to put down his phone. That ship has long since fucking careened off the waterfall. He’s here on holiday with Simon; a chance, he reminds himself with vicious conviction, to celebrate the happiest year of his life.

Laura Kuenssberg’s face glares up at him accusingly; he’s picked it up and refreshed without even noticing. “Put that thing down,” Simon murmurs, almost without feeling, “or I’ll chuck it in the bloody pool.”

Fergus flushes guiltily. “Sorry.” He leans over, presses an apologetic kiss to Simon’s forehead. “Think I’ll go for a swim.”

Simon grins and cracks open one eye. “Leave the trunks off and I’ll follow you.”

 

  

 _THAT FUCKING HARPY_ , Helen’s text blazes, and Adam, alone in his flat and only idly paying attention to the news channel, can’t help but snort at it. Mrs Whatsherface, No One From Nowhere, announced her intention to stand for Labour leadership some five hours previous, and, still thoroughly embroiled in the subsequent shitstorm, Helen is trapped in Westminster and spitting teeth. Happy toiling away for the sour-faced Margaret, or at least for the time being, Adam has dodged the entire horrific leadership mess on both occasions; Helen made the distinctly less fortunate – but infinitely more sensible and ambitious – choice the previous September of backing a rival candidate rather than the now-incumbent.

It would be safe to say that she has paid for this quite considerably in the intervening months, and her response, practical as always, has been to dedicate herself devotedly to their glorious leader – whom she’s taken to calling TGL for short – and his inestimable cause. Adam’s less sure than anyone if she believes a single word of it, but she’s certainly become extremely competent at appearing to; she’s since clawed her way up to quite an enviable position. Olly Reeder’s career had, to Adam’s delight, totally tanked back with Dan Miller’s, but Adam has since heard mortifying rumours that even he’s been eyeing up Helen’s spot on the bandwagon.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is the continued complete absence of Malcolm. Adam is grimly certain that the party would never have fallen in on itself in quite such a spectacular clusterfuck if he’d been involved. Then again, you never did know with him; it’s always wholly possible he’s orchestrating the entire drama from some dingy Westminster broom cupboard, that this is all part of some devastatingly clever plan which they won’t fully comprehend until trapped in the death throes of the final act.

The never-ending misery of the spectacle is something Adam is more than happy to be out of; _Rather you than me_ , he texts back, grinning. Someone, somewhere seems to take this as a challenge, and thirty seconds later, Fergus Williams hits the buzzer to Adam’s bleakly suave Shepherds Bush flat.

In the promising tradition of all movie romcoms, it’s pouring with rain. Adam thinks the universe, for a moment, might be playing the cruellest of practical jokes; but he taps the screen a few times, the time-honoured tradition of checking the accuracy of technology, and it’s still unmistakeably Fergus cowering in the atrium. With something like anticipation curling in his stomach, Adam buzzes him in.

Fergus arrives at his door some minutes after, visibly dripping and completely lost. “Can I come in?” he asks in a small voice, and Adam, powerless as ever, steps aside to let him pass. They haven’t spoken alone in over a year; given that Fergus used to be someone to whom he used to devote every waking moment, the silence has been more than a little jarring.

Fergus looks strange and uncomfortable in Adam’s living room, all sheet glass and minimalist aesthetic; they’d always spent far more time at Fergus’. “Mum’s fine,” he adds awkwardly when Adam follows him in, as if this must be the most obvious possible reason behind his sudden appearance on Adam’s doorstep.

“Right,” Adam says slowly, his voice thankfully holding steady. “Do you – do you want a drink?”

Fergus shakes his head. He’s wearing that same grim, constipated expression that Adam remembers before his more egregious Westminster confessions; Adam finds himself thinking over what he knows of Fergus’ current career path to try and identify what he might have made a mess of. The distant familiarity of it makes him dizzy.

“It’s Si,” Fergus says slowly, after a moment, avoiding Adam’s eye, and every nerve in Adam’s body comes alive with sheer hope. And then: “He’s – he’s asked me to marry him.”

There’s a long, deafening, screeching moment of absolute horror as that infant hope, barely having crawled out of the fucking womb, crashes spectacularly down around him. “What did you say?” Adam asks, faintly.

“Nothing yet,” Fergus answers, distracted. “I can’t. It’s just – it’s only just been a year, you know, and I don’t – ”

He’s here for advice, Adam realises incredulously. He must have been a genocidal dictator in a previous life, he thinks, to be made to endure this particular cruelty. “Do you love him?” Adam hears himself ask.

“Yes,” Fergus says, after a pause, and several of Adam’s organs shut down at once. But even as he’s preparing a  _well, then_ , imminent retirement to Gloucestershire, and/or a glassful of cyanide, he realises slowly that there’s a definite  _but_ hanging on the edge of Fergus’ mouth.

“What?”

“What  _what_ , Adam, there is no what, he’s – ”

“Bollocks, Fergus, from where I’m standing it looks like there’s a fairly big fucking what.”

Fergus stares at him. “It’s just – ” he starts, and then, blush spreading up his neck, scowls at his feet. It’s an expression Adam had once thought he’d never see again, typically employed when Fergus needs to concede that Adam is right but is too fucking stubborn to do so. “It’s not – the same,” he finishes in a small voice.

The same, Adam thinks.

“Don’tlook at me like that. I didn’t – I don’t –  _shit_. I did, alright. Before you – ” Fergus waves his hand, somehow encompassing in that single motion  _left_ ,  _came back_ ,  _left again_. “But now – no. I don’t.”

“Right,” Adam hears himself say. “Glad we got that sorted out.”

“Don’t be a prick.” Fergus scours his face with his hand. “He’s nice, alright, not like – like some, he’s not got any aspirations – ”

“ – at all?”

“ – to become the Second fucking Coming of Malcolm Tucker,  _good luck_  with that one, by the way – ”

I don’t want it, Adam wants to scream, I don’t, alright, maybe I do, but not, not if it means – 

“He’s nice,” Fergus says, but it’s jarring, flooded with disconnect, like it’s an echo. “And he’s good for me.”

“And you love him,” Adam says, slowly. With time, he thinks miserably, he might even be able to come to terms with that without, crucially, throwing himself under a bus.

“Yeah,” Fergus replies, slowly and heavily, like it’s being dragged out between his teeth. ”I do.”

They stare at the floor in gloomy silence. The pause is anything but companionable.

“I don’t exist,” Adam says quietly, coldly, “to make your shit decisions for you, Fergus.”

“I said I fucking love him, Adam, he’s not a – ”

“Oh, happy _fucking_ days,” Adam sneers, “all hark at Fergus Williams, ex-em-pee, the majestic enamoured little _queer_ with his bashful blushing _fiancé_ – ”

There’s a horrible, ringing moment where Adam thinks Fergus might hit him; then it passes, dissolves into nothing but a lurching, sick taste at the back of Adam’s mouth, slimy-heavy on his tongue. “Look,” Adam says, shakily. “It should be enough, alright? That’s what I’m trying to – it should be enough. You shouldn’t have to, have to come here, and talk it through, and define the nature of the fucking universe, Fergus. It’s not sodding astrophysics. I can’t – I can’t sort this one for you.”

“Yeah, well. Old habits.” He’s wearing that same grim, distant look he’d had the last time they’d – well, the last time they’d spoken for this long. Worse even than Adam cocking this up from petty selfishness is Fergus regretting having come at all. Fergus sighs, scuffs the nearby cabinet door with his heel. “Mum’ll kill me if I say no.”

“From where I’m standing,” Adam says slowly, “I think she’ll kill you if you say yes.”

There’s an unspeakably awkward pause. “I knew she didn’t fucking like him,” Fergus mutters sourly, sounding almost triumphant, “I just wish she’d – ”

“It’s not so much not liking him, as – ”

“I know, I get it, but. I, I can’t – punish him, for, well.” Fergus scours his face with his hand. “For not – being you.”

“Fergus,” Adam says quietly, but the look Fergus throws him is tired, angry, hard, and he can’t bring himself to push it. He asked you to marry him, he thinks, frantic and giddy with hope, he asked you to marry him and you  _came here._ That has to count for something.

A heavy, maudlin sigh, gloomy and a sign of nothing good. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have – well. But I did, so.” He glances at Adam tiredly. “I didn’t mean it to be – ”

“ – no, no, I  _know_ ,” as he realises, panicked, that this is in anticipation of Fergus’ departure, “I didn’t – ”

“I am – sorry, you know, for how all this.” Another flapping gesture, a cruel précis of the last year and a half. “That is to say, I – ”

Miss you, Adam thinks, desperately. God, say it, please. Fuck Si, and his oversized house in Hampstead Heath, and his four languages, and his accountancy degree. But he won’t, Adam knows, because for Fergus to apologise would force him to admit that all of this, all of this, wasn’t solely Adam’s fault.

“ – anyway,” Fergus finishes lamely. He still won’t look him in the eye. “Sorry for the – intrusion. I suppose I’ll see you again soon enough.”

“Right,” Adam answers, hazily. “With, er, fiancé in tow.”

“Yeah,” Fergus haltingly agrees, and the unsteady frown trapped on his face fills Adam’s chest with dizzying, blinding hope.

 

_“It’s late,”_ Diane says, and Adam, fully aware of this even through the haze of half a bottle of whisky, feels his stomach lurch with guilt nonetheless.

“Sorry,” he answers, rubbing at his eyes. “Shit. I mean – ”

 _“Hello, I suppose,”_ Diane says, dryly. He imagines her smiling, wrapped up in her dressing gown and peering out of the pitch-black kitchen window. _“Are you – ?_ ”

“God, yes, no, I mean – I’m not in any trouble or anything,” he blurts. “I’d just – been meaning to call,” Adam concludes, feebly. “And you’re – ?”

 _“We’re all alright.”_ The conversation caves to a long, uncomfortable pause. _“He said yes,”_ Diane says at the end of it, and she’s so fucking gentle, such softness in her voice. Adam can hardly bear the miserable wave of white-hot surprise. _“Adam?”_

“Yeah, I’m – I’m still.” He scours his face with his hand. “Fuck,” he adds, at length.

 _“I’m sorry, Adam,”_ Diane says, and he realises with a jolt he’s let them slide back into silence. “ _But, you know – all he did for weeks was call me and tell me how much he missed you.”_

“He didn’t tell me,” Adam answers, miserably. “I would’ve – ”

 _“I know,”_ Diane interrupts, quietly, and lets out a faint, tight sigh. _“We have some of your things, from the flat. Fergus was going to chuck them. Why don’t you come for dinner one Sunday? I can warn you if Simon’s due.”_

Adam rides a lurching flashback to a Westminster soirée, Nicholson, the suddenly-very-talkative ex-au pair. He thinks, viciously, as he always does, that he’s way out of Fergus’ league, and then swallows back against the bitter guilt. “Yeah,” he answers, vaguely, unconvincingly. “Let’s – let’s.”

  

Adam isn’t sure if it’s kindness or optimism which merits him an invitation to the subsequent celebration; he’s equally uncertain if it’s his masochism or his stubbornness that leads him to accept it, trapped in the garden he used to share with Fergus’ family on lazy Sunday afternoons, clutching his lukewarm drink and avoiding everyone’s eye.

The horror mounts most when he catches sight of Fergus coming straight for him, clearly unwillingly provoked into a diplomatic mission, holding a neon-coloured drink obviously intended for Adam. He recognises the forced expression of cheeriness from every occasion he spirited it onto Fergus’ face before shoving him towards the minister for Fisheries, the head of the DoP, whomever it was they were currently desperately trying to grease.

Fergus greets him with icy politeness, hands him the drink, comments on the lovely weather, and then they fall headlong into a crashingly awkward silence. Even after all this time, it’s still beyond strange. Standing here, a foot apart, undrinkable cocktails in steady hands. Making smalltalk, as if Adam doesn’t know his mum’s middle name, or that he’s somehow, impossibly, allergic to Weetabix.

“Must be odd,” Fergus says eventually, flapping one hand. “You know. Other side of the fence, whatever.” Fergus makes a face, adds in a tone of total contempt, “ _ShadCab_.”

Adam wants to prissily insist there’s considerably less farting about now that he’s swapped Fergus’ temper tantrums for Margaret’s oily ego, but he doesn’t think he could manage it without somehow sounding fond, and that is unthinkable. Not that it matters; Fergus, either bored or fed up with diplomacy, is already scanning the garden for his next target, apparently convinced he’s performed enough half-aborted niceties to Adam to legitimately move on. Don’t, Adam thinks, miserably, recklessly. But Fergus’ hand is already raised, fixed smile in place, and Adam’s swiftly abandoned to the autumn breeze and the dying sunlight slinking malevolently under the horizon.

Almost too late, Adam remembers the weight in his jacket pocket. “Wait,” he says quickly, catching him mid-step; Fergus’ expression is distant, strange, as if he’s anticipating something he can’t decide the nature of. “I’ve got something for you.”

This makes Fergus instantly and visibly suspicious; Adam swiftly fishes the box out of his pocket before it drifts into ubiquitous panic. He can see from the look in Fergus’ face that he knows what it is long before he opens it. “ – jesus,” Fergus says quietly. “Adam, you can’t.”

“I can, and I will, and I fucking have, alright? I’d been meaning to for – in my head I did it years ago. This is just – ” He waves his hand, vaguely between them, as if the act itself of giving was an afterthought, irrelevant. 

Fergus looks down at the watch balanced his open hands. The box is pristine, black, and considerably nicer than the one he knows Adam stored it in before, a battered brown sorry thing which had suffered from a great few years of being shoved in the bottoms of cases, rucksacks, bedside drawers. To all intents, it might as well be an engagement ring, if it weren’t for the one Fergus already wears on his left hand. 

“Put it on,” Adam says. Then, more gently: “Please.”

Adam has to help him with the strap. He’s always had the dexterity of a drunk chicken at the best of times, and tonight is no exception. It’s lighter than he’d thought it’d be, sat coolly around his wrist. He’s had it lengthened to fit his chubby arm.

“I don't wear it,” Adam says, and Fergus is staring down at his arm in order to avoid meeting his eye. “It’s sat there, useless. He’d want – he’d want. And anyway, there’s no one else to give it to. Never has been. Just you.” He pauses. “Only you.”

Fergus runs his fingers round the band. “Adam,” Fergus says, quietly, and when he finally looks at him, Adam’s eyes are kind.

“Congratulations,” Adam replies sincerely, “to both of you,” and smiles.

  

 

“Seat free?”

Adam’s nestled in a corner of the marquee as far from the other guests as he can conceivably manage; that and the glower has granted him a recent wide berth, which he’s been capitalising on excessively to drink himself inside out. They started up the band half an hour ago, and Adam has spent the intervening time trying not to relive Fergus’ look of relieved pleasure when he managed not to fall on his arse for fifteen whole minutes. Simon himself has yet to stop; Fergus, Adam resentfully notices, has since disappeared entirely. He viciously hopes the punch he’s been teaming up with over-rich fruitcake has made a mess of his nervous stomach.

The man hovering beside him is young, handsome, bored, and holding two glasses of wine. On any other day, Adam would take him as a challenge; today, he hasn’t the energy to. He waves a hand absently in answer to the question, and then, to his great surprise, finds himself accepting the second glass of wine. “Thanks,” he says, and takes a hefty swig of it.

Fergus and Simon are dancing again. He can’t help but watch them. “It’s still him,” the man says, “isn’t it?”

Adam stares at the two of them, swaying gently to a KT fucking Tunstall cover, apparently wholly and blissfully lost in each other’s arms. “Yeah,” he says eventually, and downs the glass of wine.

“Thought so,” he says mildly. “And he – ?”

Adam snorts. “I could bend you over and fuck you through his designer coffee table and he wouldn’t fucking notice.”

“Nice.” He finishes his drink, gets to his feet, and extends a hand. “Dance?”

Adam glances uneasily at the pack of future in-laws squinting thin-lipped on the other side of the tent. “I’m not sure – ”

“Oh, come on.” He wiggles his fingers. “Live a little. It might even make him jealous.”

Fat chance, Adam thinks, but wavers nonetheless. He smiles a little, soft and wry, and stands to take his hand.

 

  

“He’ll smash it,” Adam says, with honest and heartfelt conviction. “Honestly, Helen. Don’t panic. You’ll be fine.”

 _“Because the polls have been so bloody reliable recently, haven’t they,”_ Helen mutters darkly down the line. She’s rung him in a quiet panic from her Liverpool hotel room; it’s three hours before she’s due on stage, hovering at TGL’s elbow for the results of the leadership re-election. Adam’s two hundred miles away, alone in his flat with half a bottle of overpriced wine, tasked in contrast with prepping Margaret for her upcoming constituency surgery. She’s currently in a foul mood with him after he suggested – with little real hope – that she might consider going on celebrity bakeoff to counteract yet another expenses outrage, and his punishment is to leaf through her constituents’ complaints and write personalised letters to each and every one of them. It’s in quiet moments like this, staring down at some dreary fucking tirade about the trimming of local hedgerows, that it’s especially difficult to shake the spectre of Eastbourne.

Helen lets out a very long and very tight sigh. _“You should be here,”_ she says quietly. _“You could be, you know.”_

“Yeah,” Adam says, staring sightlessly down at his pile of notes, and carefully, pointedly doesn’t think about Fergus, about Glasgow. “I know.”

  

 

The air is bitter-bright around him, flushed dull orange by the streetlamps and the whiter light spilling out from the curtainless patio doors. Fergus can feel the weight of Simon’s gaze against him from inside, hot and unwelcome, and he irritably, cruelly, wishes he did have some great vice to sneak off and annoy him with, but alcohol merely makes him sleepy and nowadays he coughs up a lung after the first few drags of a cigarette. He’d bought a lottery ticket once in a hopeless fit of optimism and then been so overcome with nervous guilt he’d thrown it out of the window.

Silence, then. And good behaviour. Save for his fingers tapping nervously on his phone-screen and the huff of cars passing on the distant road. It’s not snowing, and the stars aren’t out. It’s a murky, unromantic scene, and the cheerful chatter of their guests in the room beyond just makes him sick and nervous. Homesick, too, but for a person, not a place. He’s never stopped hearing Adam’s voice in his head. The clever things he’d probably say, the look of exasperation he’d wear. God, but he misses him.

The weight of the watch, Adam’s watch, Adam’s dead dad’s watch is impossibly heavy and warm against his wrist. He’s worn it every day for the past three months; Simon has noticeably, and worryingly, stopped commenting on it.

Fergus stares down at the phone in his hand as, jarringly, his brain catches up with itself. It makes sense to him, then, why he’s sought out fresh air but not bothered to grab a coat, pulled out his phone but not yet dialled a number.

There’s always the worry it won’t ring. Then, once disproved, the worry he won’t answer. _“You alright?”_ Adam asks, instantly, sounding worried, and Fergus’ heart stops. _“Fergus?”_

“No,” Fergus blurts. Then, for hasty clarification: “I’m not – dead or anything.”

An unpleasant, staticky silence follows. Fergus imagines Si’s eyes on him again, burning holes into the hideous burgundy jacket that he thinks is flattering and Fergus wants to torch.

 _“Fergus?”_ Adam says, again.

I love you, Fergus thinks. Because he does, because he’s powerless not to, because it’s why he rang, because it’s why he’s stood outside in nothing but a shirt while his fiancé is inside and he’s trying not to throw up or cry. Fuck, he never thought he’d find himself so defined by a single fact, a single sentence, made so irrevocably miserable by it.

Fergus hangs up. He stands alone in his beautiful, ice-cold garden and under the dooming weight of it tries and fails not to break apart.

  

 

The leadership election blows into an absolute nothing-fart; Helen rings him, drunk and triumphant at four in the morning, and Adam declines yet again her kind offer to shaft Margaret and come work for the big boys. She tells him he’s a fucking idiot; he shrugs it off and hangs up. He hated every minute of DoSAC, and working as the leader’s aide seems to make Helen even more miserable than he was. Margaret’s calm, and sensible, and competent, and keeping her in line is enough for him. It might not have been once, and might not be again, but currently Adam finds himself fond of the concept of simple.

It’s much the reason why he’s made a habit of fucking Damien, his wine-clutching saviour from the engagement party. It’s also simple, is the honest truth of it. And god knows Adam spent plenty of time luxuriating in simple before Fergus, before Eastbourne.

Adam’s spent all day fielding calls that the ex-ex-ex-PM might have finally crawled out of his venture capital north American swamp to make a pronouncement on Brexit; neither he nor Margaret has any idea whether or not this is likely, but some hack at the Mail figured Adam might still have his calling card from nearly ten years previously and wouldn’t take no for a fucking answer. His phone has buzzed itself out of battery at least four times that afternoon, and when it rings again Adam has to resist the urge to throw it out of the fucking window.

“Answer that and I’ll bite your cock off,” Damien murmurs, his mouth chasing the quick curve of his fingers tugging open the buttons on Adam’s shirt.

“It’s Fergus,” Adam answers with surprise, tilting the screen to read the caller ID. He bites back a sigh as Damien’s fingers reach his belt buckle, watches lazily as Damien sinks to his knees. “Fergus,” he says tightly into the phone, “I’m –  _going_ – to have to – ringyouback in – ”

“ – five minutes?” Damien says, surfacing, and Adam thumps him, laughing.

Damien lies on the bed with a cigarette as Adam makes the call, wondering whether Fergus will merely have forgotten his own postcode, or his birthday, or his mother’s maiden name. _“He’s left me,”_ Fergus says, the moment he answers the phone, and Adam’s heart stops in his chest.

“Fergus,” Adam says, his voice shaking and hoarse, that familiar rising burst of hope clawing from his gut. “I’m – ”

 _“Talk to him,”_ Fergus interrupts miserably, and Adam’s stomach drops. _“Will you – ? Please, Adam. He won’t answer me and I don’t know what to do.”_

Adam pinches his brow, wrestling the fury building tight inside him. He has, after all, never been able to deny Fergus a fucking thing. “Alright,” he says quietly, through gritted teeth, “I’ll go,” and hangs up.

Damien looks up, both curious and worried. “Is it – ?”

“No, no, she’s fine. It’s Si,” Adam says, slowly. “He’s – he’s left him.”

Damien doesn’t need to ask for clarification; empires would rise and fall before Fergus managed to make that weighty a decision. Which means, disgustingly but entirely predictably, Adam’s been scrambled as the rescue team to resurrect his ex’s failing relationship. “You are going to talk to him, aren’t you?” Damien asks slowly, visibly fighting his own anger, pulling apart the mess on his bed in search of Adam’s clothes. “Simon.”

Adam scowls at him, dodges the thrown shirt. “I assume I’m not driving halfway across London at one in the morning to help him fill in a fucking form, love.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t – ”

“What?”

Damien rolls his eyes. ”You know what. Don’t go over there and talk him back into another six months with that arsehole just because – ”

“Don’t.” Adam finishes rebuttoning the shirt, runs his hand through his hair. “You knowI can’t very well throw a grenade in Fergus’ fucking marriage just because I want his fiancé to be found dead in a ditch.”

Damien runs a tetchy hand through his hair. “Just. Be careful, alright?”

Adam lets out a short, tight breath. “Yeah. I know. Thanks,” he adds, and drops a kiss on his forehead. “Back soon, yeah?”

“Fuck off,” Damien says tiredly to Adam’s back, though it’s largely without feeling. “Adam?” he adds quickly, after a moment, and Adam hovers in the doorway, looking back at him. “Good luck.”

  

 

Adam has never really met Simon before. They’d been in rooms together on numerous occasions, due to Fergus’ ill-placed belief that showing his mother that the missus and the ex got on fabulously would mean she would stop squinting quite so hard at him on family occasions and making pointed, thinly-veiled remarks about his fiancé’s choice of carpet shampoo; but they hadn’t exactly spoken, and they certainly hadn’t conversed.

The worst thing, Adam reflects distantly and grimly, is that Simon doesn’t even seem surprised to see him.

“You’re one too, aren’t you?” Simon says, and it takes Adam a moment to notice the cigarette packet being waved in his direction. Adam takes one gratefully, at least in part in recompense for the hellish few hours he likely still had ahead of him.

Adam gives him a light, and they sit for a moment, either side of the hotel room’s glossy mahogany table, in miserable but companionable silence. Simon is staring at him quite openly, narrow eyes and a narrower mouth. “I feel like I should – ”

“Did he tell you?” Simon interrupts, taking a long drag on the cigarette and blowing smoke upwards contemptuously. “I bet he fucking didn’t.”

“Tell me what?”

“Why I left.” Simon scowls, grinds out the stub, lights another. 

“No,” Adam concedes, slowly. “He didn’t – seem to...”

Simon’s head slopes back, and he closes his eyes. “It was you,” he murmurs, then a steady inhale, exhale, smoke-wreathed drag. He opens them again; his fussy face is worn, pulled tight with quiet resentment. “It’s always been you.”

Adam feels as if every piece of his being has somehow, impossibly, turned grey. “I didn’t want this,” he mutters, as the world lurches unhappily around him. 

Simon snorts. “The sad thing is I actually believe you.” Inhale, exhale. “So. What happens now?”

“Go home to him.”

Simon scowls, drags viciously on his cigarette. “You must be joking. I’m not going to spend another minute of my life watching him look at me and expect to see you.”

It takes all of Adam’s disintegrating self-control not to flinch. “He does love you.”

Simon pauses, taps off the ash, regards him silently for a while. ”You know,” he says eventually, his voice guttingly calm, “I don’t really know what’s worse, here. The fact that he sent you here to say that to me, or the fact you fucking came.”

 

 

Fergus is a bleary, grey-faced mess when he finally shuffles to answer his front door. He takes in Adam, standing alone in the soft three a.m. silence of the street, nods once with heavy finality, and beckons him in. “You want – tea?” Fergus asks, leading him inside. “Coffee – ?”

“ – coffee, yeah, thanks.”

Adam’s left to hover gawkily in the centre of Fergus’ immaculately-clad living room, all tasteful beiges and striking greys, fitted out uncompromisingly in Simon’s tastes. Their engagement photo in a white frame is still balanced on the mantelpiece, flanked either side by calla lilies in fluted vases. Fergus looks as happy as Adam had remembered, already unhappily acquainted with its twin, balanced on a bookcase in Fergus’ parents’ house.

He’s drawn inexorably to the kitchen, stands lost for a moment in the doorway watching Fergus at the sink; he’s staring off into the garden, shoulders slumped, his thumb and forefinger idly turning his ring. Adam feels certain then, with a sickening lurch, that he definitely should not have come.

Fergus jumps when he sees him, and his face is wretched, the way he scrambles quickly for some semblance of control. “ – sorry, I’ll – I am – ” He walks swiftly over to the boiling kettle, two mugs sat ready out on the countertop. “How is it again? White, one sugar? Shit, no, wait, that’s – ”

Mug number two goes clattering to the floor, and Fergus burns his hand on the kettle. Adam wordlessly deals with the former as Fergus resumes his vigil by the sink, running the cold tap against the vivid mark. His shoulders, a high, hard line, are shaking slightly, and Adam wants nothing more than to smooth them down with the palm of his hand. 

The rattling hiss of the tap shuts off, and the silence in its wake is instantly worse. “Sorry,” Fergus says, and his voice is nothing but hollow. “This is – fucking silly. I – ”

Adam would give a hundred lifetimes to not endure the quiet splintering of Fergus’ resolve, the way misery ripples across his face and grabs hotly at his throat. Fergus clutches at the countertop for strength and tries in vain to hide his eyes; enough, Adam thinks viciously. Fucking enough. He’s here. He has to be.

“Come on,” Adam says quietly. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Fergus leads him upstairs with the drunken sway of an exhausted child. They stand together on the landing, unfamiliar ground, walled in by tastefully cream wainscoting and half a dozen plain white doors; Fergus looks down the line of them like he’s never been there before. Adam remembers this, the dead space that always came before Fergus decided how much of what he wanted he was actually going to admit.

“Don’t go,” Fergus mutters, staring at his feet. “It’s late – early. And we’ve got four bloody guestrooms.”

Adam nods once. “Alright,” he concedes. “Get some rest. We’ll work out a plan in the morning.”

  

 

The spare room he finds is huge and echoing, tucked at the back of the house away from the glaring neon streetlight. Adam sits alone on the bed, still fully-dressed, and stares blankly out of the window, phone ubiquitous in his hand. It might be the opulent nonsense of the kingsize, but Adam can’t help but feel strangely small on top of it. He’d half-expected to see Fergus’ awful yellow bedsheets, but the bed – as everywhere else in this art museum of a house – is decked out in Simon’s illustrious tastes. He can practically smell the thread count.

He can still taste the sourness of Simon’s cigarette in his mouth, smell the foulness of the smoke in his shirt and coat. Margaret’s always telling him off for smoking; she’s a dreadful fucking nag when she wants to be. Whatever else, she and Fergus have always had that in common.

Adam’s due at work in less than four hours; due to shuffle along at Margaret’s side and listen blindly to complaints about missing wheelie bins and the local hedgehog preservation society. He’d never thought the idea could be a relief until his alternative became helping Fergus reconstruct his catastrophically imploding marriage.

 

  

Adam spent five long, heartfelt years convincing Fergus out of every tiny unnecessary expenditure, ever-mindful of the conscientious taxpayer; he would be beyond horrified to learn how much this outrageously decadent bed cost, particularly granted how little sodding sleep he’s managing to achieve in it. He wakes almost every hour like clockwork and stares up at the stylishly-scalloped magenta ceiling with something like bile at the back of his throat, shocked back into consciousness by the memory of the hard look of sadness in Simon’s eyes. The worst thing, Adam thinks, the very worst thing in all of this is that he hadn’t even seemed especially surprised to see him.

It isn’t yet dawn; the sky outside is barely tinged with blue. Adam wakes again, and this time he finds Fergus is sat on the other side of the bed, watching him. “Couldn’t sleep,” Fergus mutters, when Adam opens his eyes. “I kept thinking about – ” He breaks off, scours a hand through his decidedly wisping hair. “Do you remember all those rituals we used to go through? Pretending like it was convenience, ending up in bed together.”

Fergus sounds miserable; the memory makes Adam feel vaguely angry. You might’ve pretended, Adam thinks. I never bloody did.

“I thought I’d changed,” Fergus continues, almost morose. “I thought I’d – become better with him.”

“I know,” Adam answers, rough with sleep and sloped with irritation. “I read the interview.”

Fergus winces; there’s a long, achingly awkward pause. “I only mean that I’m – here again,” he says, slowly. He looks oddly wistful. “Looking for excuses.”

For a moment, Adam doesn’t answer. “Look, Fergus,” Adam mutters, pushing himself up off the bed, “I’m not doing this for you.” He tries and fails to shake the exhaustion from his mind by rubbing at his eyes, before conceding defeat with a sigh. “Fuck me or don’t. Marry him or don’t. But you have to choose. Not me.”

Fergus, characteristically, hesitates. His eyes flick briefly to Adam’s mouth and then away; Adam can hear the cogs clicking in Fergus’ brain, his stupid sense of loyalty, of chivalry fighting with his clear desire. Adam has never felt so unimportant, so exposed as in that moment, waiting for Fergus to decide whether or not he’s worth it.

Then Fergus looks at him, actually looks at him, for the first real time since Adam first arrived on his doorstep, hours before. “I missed you,” Fergus says, his voice rendered hoarse and miserable by the truth of it, and Adam, helpless and fucking hopeless to ignore it, leans forward and kisses him.

Fergus makes this noise against his mouth, small and soft and desperate, and it’s enough, apparently, whatever it is that Adam’s said or done, because he shoves Adam down onto the bed and straddles him, kissing him fiercely, one hand wound painfully tight in Adam’s hair. It feels, as it always has, a hundred times more potent, more terrifying with Fergus than it ever has with anyone – and he lost this, Adam thinks desperately, I lost this, and now – to have it –

He’d endure anything. Bear any humiliation, accept any condition. It’s a sudden, concrete knowledge Adam had forgotten and now rediscovers like a blow to the head; the lengths he’d go to, in order just to have this back again.

Fergus shoves back the duvet and feels for Adam’s cock through his underwear, and the resulting shock of pleasure is a bolt of fire down Adam’s spine, impossibly strong and heady. He hears himself whine against Fergus’ mouth, his own fingers pressing hard against the small of Fergus’ back, guiding their hips together and grinding up against him in small, half-aborted circles. Pleasure is already building warmly at the base of Adam’s spine, pushing out in strong, heady waves up through his stomach and out across his chest, intensified again at every point their bodies touch; Fergus’ fingers against his arm and in his hair, the hot press of Fergus’ lips on his own. Even through three layers of fabric he can feel the heat of Fergus’ cock against his, dizzyingly intimate, and he’s remembering in a vicious, heady wave every single moment they’ve ever spent like this, a hundred memories he’s stifled and shoved away in the interim, how often they’d spent wrapped up impossibly close in each other’s pleasure. How precisely it had felt to have Fergus push him down into the bed, finger him open, fuck his way inside him –

They’ve barely been together for a minute when Fergus tilts his head away to drag in a desperate, shocked breath, and Adam notices he’s trembling, one long hot line of tension above him. He’ll come like this, Adam realises, he’ll come like this for me, because of me. Never mind Si and the fucking piano and the engagement ring and their inhospitably beautiful home. Never mind all the aching, endless dead time between them, all the fights they’ve ever had; Adam can still reduce him to this, a wretched sweating mess, shaking apart above him.

Fergus buries his face in Adam’s neck just as Adam’s fingers find their way into Fergus’ hair; Fergus cries out at the contact, sharp and long and desperate, and comes against him, his hips jerking. Adam holds him through it, tight and shaking with the strength of it, but it takes Fergus fumbling between them and taking him in hand before he follows him, swearing quietly under his breath and then moaning out his pleasure shamelessly as he finally tips over.

An unfamiliar stillness falls over them when he’s done, soft and somehow solemn, and it twists something strange in Adam’s stomach, something not entirely pleasant. He’s distantly aware of the likelihood that Fergus will regret this, once he’s stopped shivering through the aftershocks; but in that moment he couldn’t give less of a shit. He runs his fingers through Fergus’ hair and listens, feels the way Fergus’ breath slows and evens as he falls asleep on top of him. It’s far more than he once hoped he’d ever get again.

  

 

The front door slams with a rattle at eight a.m., and even as it jerks Adam out of sleep he realises that Fergus is no longer lying next to him. Adam lies still, listening hard to the unfamiliar sounds of the house, and then there are voices; two men, sharp with anger. Si, then. Adam’s stomach twists at the thought of being caught like this – but it’s embarrassment, not guilt. Adam, somewhat unsurprisingly, finds that he doesn’t have a single shred of remorse.

Adam slips out of bed and dresses quickly, listening to the muffled row without being able to decipher the words. He checks his phone, ascertains there’s nothing from Margaret or Helen, and then cracks open the door, risks a single step out into the landing. He’s thankful for the protection of the huge and overly ornate banister; Si never made it further than the hallway below, and without it, he’d spot Adam in a heartbeat.

“I walked out of our fucking house, Fergus,” Simon says, his voice tight with anger, “and rather than deigning to come after me yourself, you  _sent Adam_.”

“It wasn’t – that’s not what I – you didn’t answer your phone – ” Simon lets Fergus himself jabber into an unhappy silence. “I want this to work,” Fergus insists, miserably, after a pause. “Please come home. I don’t – this is silly, darling, this is – utterly daft,  _please_ , sweetheart, you know that I – ”

“God, look at you, it’s like you can’t fucking help yourself! Your mother always said – ”

“Not her again,” Fergus interrupts, furious, “I wish she’d keep her bloody – ”

“God help you, Fergus, do you even know what you sound like?” Fergus, it seems, has no answer to this; there’s a horrible, aching pause. “He’s here, isn’t he,” Simon says, and Adam’s stomach lurches. “I can bloody smell him on you. Well, you’re certainly suited to one another, the pair of you.”

“Please,” Fergus begs again. Adam thinks – knows – that he wouldn’t be able to resist that. It’s unnecessary confirmation that of the three of them, Simon is undoubtedly the better man.

“I was so determined to make you happy that I couldn’t see it,” Simon says quietly. “This was doomed from the beginning. I was just too stubborn and too besotted to believe it.”

“Si,” Fergus says, cracking on the single syllable, helpless.

“This is my house,” Simon says, ignoring him, a final, flat retort. “I’m going to Andrew’s for the weekend. I don’t want you here when I come back.”

The front door slams to. Adam, struggling to hear much over the booming sound of his own heartbeat, thinks he hears Fergus swear, and then the quieter, muffled click of the kitchen door sliding shut. Adam closes his eyes, gives the spare room a final glance for his things, and descends the stairs to follow Fergus’ flight into the kitchen.

Fergus spares him a brief, miserable look as he enters. “You got – any – ?”

It takes Adam half a heartbeat to even remember that Fergus, once upon a very long time, smoked, and understand the meaning of the odd, half–aborted gesture towards Adam’s chest. He hands Fergus the pack of cigarettes, watches in silence as Fergus, hands still shaking and face still grey, finds, takes, and lights one. An unidentifiable ceramic something is briefly commandeered as an ashtray, and Adam, concerned with the temperament of the smoke detector in the hallway, has the sense to crack open the nearest window. 

After five minutes, Fergus’ hands have stopped shaking. He looks as old as Adam feels. “You heard,” Fergus says.

Adam nods once, a sharp, unhappy movement. It was you, Adam thinks, quietly. It’s always been you.

“ _Jesus_ , Adam, it’s not like we – ” Fergus scours his face with his hand. ”He’s wrong, alright, he’s wrong about – this. I don’t want.  _Christ_.” He shakes his head. “Five years, Adam, and all we did was – snipe, and pointscore, and make each other miserable. You can’t tell me you want all that again.”

For about half a minute, Adam can’t even breathe. “Is that honestly,” Adam says, slowly, “what you remember? What you think of me?”

To Fergus’ credit, he looks too miserable to answer. It explains a lot, though, Adam decides, as distantly in the back of his mind whatever he had left of a heart begins to break with a noise akin to a boiling swamp. If he’s thought back on five years of friendship, six a.m. meetings, stationery-cupboard blowjobs, hotfooted policy invention, inquiry panicking, drunken snogging, lazy Sundays, and quiet DoSAC afternoons, and remembered nothing but his own apparent misery, then no fucking wonder he’s spent the last year and a half looking at Adam like he’s some sort of venereal disease. Vaguely uncomfortable, but impossible to shift.

“I wasunhappy,” Fergus says eventually, his voice small.

Adam laughs, hysterical and bitter.  “It was  _Westminster_ , Fergus, we were all fucking unhappy, I just didn’t realise I was apparently a part of that. Sorry that I fucking – flattered myself to think that I – ”

Sat across that glass table, sniggering under breath and trying to avoid each other’s eye. Peter’s palace, likewise, Fergus’ body a warm pressure up his side. Fergus’ couch,  _this couch_ , Saturday afternoon, the Last Test highlights on in the background, scattered sheets of half a speech splayed idly across his lap – 

–  _you can’t tell me you want all that again_.

Adam sucks in a sharp breath, turns on his heel, and marches out of the kitchen. Fergus tails him into the hallway like a man possessed, making half-aborted attempts to grab at Adam’s arm, blurting out a helpless litany of “ – no – _stop it_ , Adam, just – stop, please don’t – ”

“ – look, Fergus,” Adam interrupts, spitting the words in a focused beam of anger, gesturing furiously with one hand as the other tries and fails desperately to untangle his coat from where he threw it on the banister. “You can’t have it both fuckingways. I, I can’t be the same fucking person who apparently made you miserable for six years in one breath and then – bring you your fucking breakfast in bed in another. I can’t be – ”

“Christ on a fucking bike, Adam, I don’t understand how you can’t see that this is a bad thing! My – my fiancé left me yesterday – ” Fergus’ face is, yet again, briefly riveted in misery. “  – and I woke up this morning the happiest I’ve felt in fucking ages, next to you.” Fergus sucks in a breath, scours his face with his hand, his voice quieting, slowing with the words.  “That’s fucked, Adam, that’s totally fucked.”

“What the fuck am I meant to do with that, Fergus?” Adam asks, his voice low and hollow. ”You’re angry with me because I made you happy?”

“Fucking hell, Adam, I’m angry because you fucking shouldn’t!”

Silence. Total, heavy, and complete. For a long, awful minute, Adam looks like he can no longer even speak English; then he’s bolting for the door, white-faced and coat dangling uselessly from one arm, and it’s only Fergus throwing himself bodily across the doorframe which keeps him in the house a moment longer. “Don’t you  _fucking_  dare, Fergus.”

“I didn’t mean – ”

– a lie, and they both know it. “Enough, alright? Fucking enough. I’m done with being your fucking scapegoat. Let me go.”

Fergus’ mouth yaws, a fucking Swain-like flounder that makes Adam viciously feel for a moment like he’s just dropkicked a duck. He takes the opportunity to break through Fergus’ flailing hands and sweep down the hall, as behind him, slowly regaining the ability to speak, Fergus jabbers, ”That’s not – I don’t – Adam,  _please_  – ”

Adam pauses with his hand on the latch, and when he turns to face him he’s wearing a Tuckeresque rictus of fury. ”Look, according to you, I lost you DoSAC, I lost you Eastbourne, and now I’ve lost you your fucking husband. All I’ll say is there’s another fucking common denominator here, Fergus, and it fucking  _isn’t me_.”

  

 

Damien’s a conspirator in a hideous flatshare stuffed in the dark recesses of Wandsworth, whose damp and unpleasant dinginess had led Adam to take one look at its mildewed walls and make Damien swear never to rent a fucking property again; but it has four walls, running water, a sofa, a TV, and crucially is as far from the reach of Fergus Williams as it’s currently fucking possible to be. Damien is, therefore, not all that surprised to open his door gone midnight to find Adam, soaked and miserable, scowling at his doorstep. 

Damien’s heart sinks. ”Come on,” he says quietly, and fans out an arm. “Let’s get pissed and watch  _Come Dine With Me_.”

They slump together on the tatty sofa, Damien sprawled inelegantly along Adam’s chest. The television rattles on in the background as Damien listens to the slowing push and pull of Adam’s breath, his fingers slowing in Damien’s hair, and, finally, the tiniest snort of a snore as he falls asleep.

Adam stirs a little as Damien sneaks out for a fag, but doesn’t wake; he’s still out flat when Damien flicks his lighter to begin his third and incredibly, unbelievably, Fergus comes skulking round the corner. Fergus blanches visibly at the sight of Damien, perched on the low brick wall and staring at him coolly. “You’ve got a fucking nerve,” Damien mutters; but still offers him a cigarette, shuffles a little up the wall nonetheless.

“He is here, then?” Fergus asks as he squats to join him on the damp brick wall, and Damien nods in the brief brightness caused by the lighter’s slur of flame.

“How the fuck did you even – ? Oh, no, hang on, let me guess, your sodding mother.”

Fergus makes a face. “Not you too,” he mutters darkly, rubbing his forehead. “But no, it wasn’t her. And anyway, she likes you too much, she wouldn’t tell me even if I asked. Do you think he’ll even see me?”

Damien glances at Fergus, wary. “I don’t think he’ll appreciate being cornered.”

Fergus nods gloomily. ”I thought as much. I just didn’t want him to think I – ” He falters, sucks on the cigarette, taps off the ash, and the look on his face breaks the very last splinter of Damien’s resolve. From the little Adam told him, it’s been barely eighteen hours since they last spoke; Fergus looks like he’s been away at war for months. These fucking idiots, he thinks, not unkindly. 

“Why don’t you come in,” Damien says, “and I’ll – wake him, and ask.”

A spasm of terror briefly grips Fergus’ expression, a brief and amusing diversion from the prior guilty self-pity; for a moment, Damien wonders whether Fergus is going to wistfully insist it isn’t worth the bother. Then Fergus nods, rises shakily to his feet, and shuffles into the flat behind him, staring sightlessly at the dismal, peeling walls.

Through some miracle of self-reserve Fergus wasn’t even vaguely aware he had, he waits in the hallway as Damien returns to the living room. He watches, possessed, as Damien perches on the arm of the sofa, gently runs his fingers through Adam’s hair. The sight sends a brief jolt of melancholy through his chest; he looks happy, Fergus thinks. God, he probably is. 

“He’s here,” Damien says softly, as Adam blinks blearily, stirs; even from his dismal stalker’s slouch in the hallway, Fergus can see the tenseness grip him. “He’ll go, if I ask him to.”

The intervening seconds seem to pass like centuries; then Adam, at long fucking last, shakes his head. “Send him in,” he says, and reality itself seems to lurch a little under Fergus’ feet.

Strangely, when Fergus actually shuffles past Damien in the doorway and enters the room, an eerie sense of calm settles over him. The hangman’s walk, he thinks. Adam, still sleep-rumpled but propped to sitting on the sofa, doesn’t look at him, even when Fergus kneels next to him, settles back on the heels of his feet.

“Come home,” Fergus says quietly, and the sentence in itself is his apology, his offer; Fergus’ immaculate, soulless house hasn’t been anyone’s home for years. But they could have that, he’s saying, like they once did; god, please let them have that again. “Please. Come home with me.”

Adam still won’t fucking look at him. The silence, save for the obvious clattering of Damien in the nearby kitchen, is absolute; Fergus feels more heavy and more sober than he’s felt in his entire fucking life, heart pulled taut and hope-filled, obeisance in a stranger’s flat. Literally down on his fucking knees, praying. 

“... yeah,” Adam says, eventually. “Yeah, okay, let’s, let’s –” A shaky breath, licked with the slightest flicker of a smile. “Let’s go home.”

 

  

They share the bed in the guestroom. Fergus can’t stomach the thought of entering the room he used to share with Si, never mind sleeping in it; and besides, it feels – fitting, somehow.  A suitably neutral space.

Fergus wakes alone, as Adam had the day before, and, characteristically, panics. He falls out of bed, tugs on a dressing-gown salvaged from the wardrobe, and all but trips down the stairs in his desperation to ransack the house for Adam –

He’s there. Standing at his kitchen sink, humming along half-heartedly to something Fergus doesn’t even recognise on a radio he’d forgotten owning. Si hadn’t been much fond of music. Adam smiles a little when he spots Fergus in the doorway, crinkle-eyed and heady, a kick to the chest, and a significant part of Fergus believes he’s died a hideous death in a zombie apocalypse and this entire scenario is the invention of his panic-riddled mind mid-death throes. “Kettle’s just boiled,” Adam says casually, “there’s toast ready if you – ”

“You’re still here.” Adam’s smile falters for half a heartbeat, and with a lurch Fergus realises the awfulness of what he’s said. ” _No_ , no, I mean – I meant – part of me thought you’d be gone by the time I woke up.”

“Oh.” Adam’s face clears again, edgy but not unhappy. “I want to be here. I’ve – ”

Always wanted to, Fergus thinks, but Adam’s cut himself off, turned back to his frying pan, seemingly unwilling to get into their hundredth fight. The room even smells different with him in, Fergus thinks, closing his eyes and breathing in deep. “Are you having a fit?” Adam asks, a lot closer than Fergus had anticipated; he jumps a foot in the air, smooth as sodding ever. Adam’s standing in front of him, proffering a mug of tea and still unforgivably smiling, and Fergus wants desperately to kiss him.

“Fergus,” Adam murmurs, dark eyes fixed on Fergus’ mouth, and he almost can’t breathe around the weight of it. Desire is the wrong word; it isn’t base and lustful, but more akin to hope, aching and somehow melancholy. Adam rests his splayed fingers against Fergus’ chest, mug abandoned on the countertop, and the hesitance of the touch is insufferable, so fucking cautious – as if, even now, he expects Fergus to smack his hand away.

Enough, Fergus thinks, fucking enough. He rests his hand on the curve of Adam’s neck and kisses him.

Adam’s breath is swift and shaky when he pulls away, and he looks punch-drunk, staring unseeing at Fergus’ mouth. God, but he’s missed that, somehow sharper and deeper than anything else he’s ever felt. Adam slowly traces his bottom lip with his thumb, and Fergus promptly swallows his own tongue. It still seems unbelievably surreal that a long six years down the line Adam still looks at him like he’s the second fucking coming, even if he has now sorted out his hair and shed half a stone off the DoSAC diet.

It isn’t until Adam’s face freezes and morphs into an expression of panic that Fergus clocks the strong smell of burning drifting from the hob, and a brief, harried thirty seconds pass as they together deal with the now-shrivelled remains of Fergus’ breakfast. It is, on the scale of romantic disasters, practically negligible as far as they’re concerned, and they thankfully notice the cloud of smoke before the crabby fire alarm has the chance to; but it’s there, standing at the hob and still grinning a little stupidly, that Adam finally spots the bareness of his finger, the absence of his ring.

Something small and unpleasant squirms in Fergus’ stomach as Adam takes up the hand, runs his finger round the softer skin, but it’s soon eclipsed by the look of wonderstruck disbelief on Adam’s face. “I meant it,” Fergus says quietly. “I wouldn’t have – if I didn’t.”

If anything, Adam now looks worse than he did before, the smile fallen from his face and his hand slack against Fergus’ fingers. This is beyond nonsensical to Fergus, who, as far as he’s concerned, just tossed out a sodding marriage proposal – unless, of course, he doesn’t _want_  – 

Adam sucks in a deep breath, smiles at him weakly. ”Sorry,” he says shortly, “I – didn’t expect. I thought maybe – ”

“ – I’d change my mind?” Fergus interrupts, incredulous; but again Adam’s expression sours, draws tight with anger or confusion, like he wants to scold Fergus for being thick.

“No,” Adam says slowly. “I thought maybe – you’d want both.”

He looks at Fergus then, his eyes hard, and Fergus, stomach falling through his feet, can’t decide what’s worse; that Adam would willingly accompany him into such idiocy, or that he himself, in all honesty, would plausibly suggest it to begin with.

“Do you remember when Si proposed?” Fergus asks quietly, and god, it’s almost ludicrous in its obviousness – when his fiancé –  _ex_ -fiancé, he supposes, now – proposed, and Fergus said I’ll think about it and then drove across London in the middle of the fucking night to see  _him_  – 

“Yes,” Adam says shortly, dragging Fergus back to the here-and-now in time to see his expression definitely morphing into anger, “ _Funnily_ enough – ”

“ –  _no_ , I mean – do you remember what I said? About – I mean.” Fergus sways a little on his feet, runs his hand irritably through his hair. ”I’m not just going to stop loving him, no matter how much I.  _God_.” 

Fergus is sure he sees the moment where the light goes out behind Adam’s eyes, and it flat-out panics him, the thought that he might yet again inch so close to this and still, unbelievably, fall flat – but then, miracles beyond fucking miracles, some sort of fucking divine intervention itself, as clarity dawns in Adam’s face and, almost imperceptibly, he relaxes. “It’s not the same.”

“ –  _yes_ , god, exactly, that’s what I. It never has been, alright? I bet that sounds – fucking ludicrous to you now, and it is, but. I mean it. Always, right?”

Adam smiles at him, and though it’s humourless, it isn’t cruel. “You know – that’s exactly what he said. That night, when I. Simon.” He scours his face with his hand. “I almost didn’t want to believe him – ”

Fergus frowns, confused.  He didn’t – he hasn’t – oh god, Fergus realises miserably, he knew. He always knew. And yet he still proposed. God,  _Simon_. He slumps back against the counter, slowly turning grey. “God, I’ve made a right fucking mess of this,” he mutters, expression tight and miserable.

Adam, still stood at his side and more than a little angry, breaks, and concedes to meet this acknowledgement of his idiocy with kindness. ”Just a tad,” Adam murmurs, smiling slightly, as he runs his thumb across the back of Fergus’ palm. “Come here, you fucking basket case,” he adds, pulling him close. ”It’s done, alright? It’s done.” 

  

 

Fergus’ Chiswick home is long since gone, sold months ago to move in with Si; he and Adam spend a hideous but thankfully relatively short-lived day cleaving out Fergus’ belongings from Simon’s, and then they load up a rented van and drive it all down the M40. Adam cites family matters in his early-morning phonecall to Margaret, whose thin-lipped expression he can hear down the line, and he thanks her silently for having enough tact to not point out that Adam’s entire family has been dead for nigh on two decades.

Diane equally does him the courtesy of not looking remotely surprised or sentimental when the van crawls up the drive, and once they’ve unloaded everything into one horrid mess in the garage she sends them off to walk Harry. Harry himself seems decidedly unenthused by the suggestion, now too old and arthritic to really enjoy belting around the back fields he and Fergus used to take him to before, but he trots along beside them happily enough; and once they reach the wide expanse of the open fields Adam finds himself glad of the relative peace and solitude. He recalls standing here with Fergus countless times before, staring out at the brown-green-grey horizon and thinking how distant Westminster had felt. He wonders if he’ll ever rediscover that quietude again.

“Never thought I’d be here with you again,” Fergus says as they stand there together, shoulders hunched against the growing November chill. “I stopped enjoying it. Mum never liked Si as much as you and she always made bloody sure I knew it.”

Once, that might’ve given Adam cause to preen; but to think of it as a victory now seems unbelievably petty. “Your mum invited me over a few times,” Adam admits. “I even brought Damien.” Adam remembers the look of forced, bright hospitality on Diane’s face with a wince-inducing horror; she’d watched him throughout dinner in this way that was so very fucking knowing. He’d wanted to slap her; he’d settled for getting very, very drunk, which  had seemed to only further prove her right.

“I know,” Fergus mutters. “She’d always ring me and tell me all about it, like you were someone from her bloody Bridge club.” Adam can imagine it vividly; Diane has a way of talking around a subject, an absence of comment, that tells you precisely what it is she’s actually trying to say. “I was so furious with you,” Fergus continues quietly. His eyes are on Harry, trotting around nearby in the field below. “For going to Labour. It felt like you’d just – discarded me. That’s why I – found him. Si. I wanted to forget you and punish you all at once.”

Adam can’t look at him. Harry has found, begun to excavate, and then abandoned a rabbit hole. It feels oddly fitting. “I told your mum once that I would’ve – that if you’d just told me how you felt, then I’d have dropped everything,” Adam says quietly, after a while. “But you did tell me. In a hundred different ways, for months. I just didn’t listen.”

Fergus shrugs tiredly. “I could’ve been clearer. I could’ve stormed up to London and had it out with you, and I didn’t. I was too much of a bloody coward to fix any of it either.”

“I don’t regret it,” Adam says, after a moment. “Going to Labour.” He feels Fergus stiffen; Adam turns towards him, rests his fingers lightly on Fergus’ forearm. He can feel the firm leather of the watch-strap even through Fergus’ thick wool coat. “No, listen, I don’t. It was an unmissable opportunity and I wasn’t wrong to take it. But I am sorry for what happened next. I treated you like shit, and I shouldn’t have.”

Fergus breathes out, one long, steady rush. “Well. That’s something.” He scuffs the ground with his heel, leans, ever-so-slightly, into the warm press of Adam’s hand. “I’ve always been shit at forgiving people. I tend to bear a hell of a grudge. But – I’m trying, alright?”

Adam nods once. Standing together with him there in the dying November light, there’s something hanging gently in the air between them, a fundamental need, a fundamental affection that neither of them has ever been able to deny. It feels, in that moment, an awful lot like hope. “Yeah,” he says shakily, and smiles. It’s enough.


	3. Epilogue I: April 2017

After promising doggedly for inestimable months that it was an absolute impossibility, on the 18th April 2017 the Prime Minister calls a snap election. Adam’s stuck firefighting another half-aborted leadership coup when he hears the news; Helen, triumphant, phones him from TGL’s equally aborted pre-interview with the BBC to tell him how bloody brilliant it is. They’d been there attempting to convince the media that the exact same leadership coup Adam was in the middle of eradicating absolutely, definitely, definitively was not happening. Adam, decidedly less convinced of both their public credibility and their ability to overthrow the current regime barely two years after the last disaster, attempts at least to be civil.

It’s telling, Adam knows, that his immediate thought isn’t of his current charge, post-Margaret; she’s tried-and-tested ShadCab, both terrifyingly competent and with at least two other equally-ambitious and worryingly-young aides to panic at. He thinks, instead, of Fergus. Adam resists the urge to phone him, drops the bollocking he’d been en-route to deliver in favour of rushing up to Islington, and does his level best to man the barricades. Her majority two years earlier had been more than comfortable, and the seat itself has been Labour since its inception forty-odd years ago; it’s hardly Eastbourne. It’s comforting to know that there are at least some battles he won’t have to endlessly fight again.

Fergus is in the flat when he gets home, waiting for him. He’s wearing a constipated look of steely determination, and Adam knows what’s coming long before he says it. “I’m going to,” Fergus says immediately. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. I’m going to stand.”

Adam’s heart sinks. Part of him had thought – he’d rather thought Fergus had somehow grown past all of that. This job is Adam’s lifeblood, but it’s in a way that has never been true for Fergus; the one distant, unyielding truth of the past two years is that Fergus has always seemed happier without it.

Maybe he’s wrong, Adam thinks quietly. Fergus came into all of this long before he knew Adam; and even at DoSAC it’d been frequently obvious how much Fergus cared about what they were doing. At the time Adam had dismissed this as honourable, oddly charming, and fundamentally naïve. Adam was the one desperate to either negotiate Fergus’ way to party leader, or dump his frankly unelectable party and jump ship to Labour; no desire or motivation had ever come from Fergus for either. Really, Adam finds himself remembering, Fergus had let Adam steer his hand, let Adam talk him into the disaster that is DoSAC, but only thought politically when prompted by Adam and convinced that it might enact actual change.

Fergus isn’t interested in power; not in the way he is, at any rate. At most, Fergus cares about progress, about change, though in a rather wet-handed liberal way that renders either unlikely to manifest. It’s a different type of politics to Adam’s, who can’t imagine anything more awful than endless constituency surgeries without the compensation of edging towards the front bench; but there are six hundred and fifty MPs in Westminster, and it’s only a tiny proportion of them ever manage that, or even want it. And there’s nothing wrong – or, at the very least, nothing controversial – with Fergus settling for becoming one of them, as much as it would bore Adam rigid. They’re no longer tied together; they don’t even serve the same party. Fergus’ career is no longer Adam’s responsibility.

Perhaps it’s just that the idea frightens him. Of Fergus back in Westminster without him, in another soulless, minuscule office with another tired, fractious, competent but ill-tempered special adviser. It isn’t even so much the threat that faceless employee might pose, despite Adam’s inclinations to both paranoia and possessiveness; but rather Adam remembers, more clearly than he’d like, how swiftly everything had crashed apart when he’d moved to Labour, when they no longer had the advantage of spending every waking moment of every day tangled in each other’s company. As much as Fergus can’t escape blamelessly from everything that passed between them, the guilt for that initial yawning absence, Adam has to concede, lies squarely at his fucking door.

It would make Fergus happy, Adam realises. To have the chance to just be MP for Eastbourne. And he’ll – he’ll just have to be better. Stricter. Cut back – however agonizingly – on his own ambition if required, with the memory to serve as motivation of how it had felt to watch Fergus slow-dancing with his fiancé on the other side of the room.

Surely, Adam thinks, they can’t at least make as much of a fucking mess of it as they did before.

“You’re sure?” Adam asks quietly.

“I’m sure,” Fergus says, and grins at him. “Bring it.”


	4. Epilogue II: February 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basically i am wishwellingtons' bitch and she insisted it wasn't fixed enough, so here is her personalised bespoke deleted scene/extra.  
>   
>  **please note:** this is set BETWEEN part 2 and part 3, despite obviously existing as part 4. it wouldn't work pacing-wise there, and i don't want to mess with the original fic, which is why it's in as part 4. i hope i've made this clear with the chapter titles, but that's why the chronology is wonky!

The brightly-painted walls of the elegant townhouses slink smoothly out around him, gleaming white in the cold February sunshine. Fergus stands at the foot of the stairs, staring up at the high, white columns flanking the stark black door, catching the smell of the damson tree stretching up gracefully beside him. He takes two of the steps at once in a spurt of mad courage, and then pauses within reach of the door to hesitate. On the street below a mum shuffles past, tired but smiling, leading two tiny blond-haired boys in their little school uniforms, complete with little soft felt grey caps. He’d wanted that life, Fergus thinks, with a quiet, aching resentment. He’d have done anything to have it. He almost did.

Fergus swallows the grief, pulls in a breath, and rings the bell.

Simon answers the door, and fixes Fergus with a very long, very hard stare. Fergus coughs, shuffles his feet. “Can I – can I come in?”

Simon says nothing. He looks away, into the middle distance, pinches the brow of his nose, and moves, eventually, to one side.

The hallway reeks of paint. He’d been meaning to spruce up the sitting room, Fergus remembers; they’d been arguing – largely without feeling – about whether to go for chartreuse or apricot for the feature wall. He resists the urge to stick his head in and see which option he’s gone for. Si leads him back towards the kitchen, sticking the kettle on, Fergus suspects, just to have something to do with his hands.

“How’ve you been?” Fergus asks, standing awkwardly a foot in from the doorway, scarf twisted through his fingers.

Fergus watches the wave of incredulity ripple through him, the way Si fights and overcomes it. It makes his heart ache. “Work’s been busy.” He pulls down the Darjeeling from the tea-cupboard and fetches the second-best teapot. “Went over to Burgundy for Christmas.”

They stand in silence after that, listening to the kettle rattle. Simon catches it just before it boils, fills the pot, and places it down on the kitchen table, squatting between them like the official line of some great battlefield. Nice weather for it, Fergus wants to say, somewhat weakly.

“Why are you here, Fergus?” Simon asks calmly; Fergus fights back a wince. He hardly needed the reminder of which of them had always been the better, the more adult.

“I wanted to apologise,” Fergus says in a small voice. He clears his throat, gaining a little of his courage back now that he’s begun to speak. “I’m not sure it’ll matter much to you, and – well, I know it’s not exactly punctual, but. I took advantage of your kindness in an awful way, and I really am truly sorry for it.”

Simon’s looking at him with a kind of weary acceptance that claws the stomach right out of him. He feels somewhat like a child who, having committed some monstrous crime, is learning for the first time that his parents’ forgiveness isn’t necessarily universally forthcoming. “I’m not sure,” Simon says slowly, after a long, horrible moment, “that you really understand what it is you need to apologise for, Fergus.”

Fergus blanches. “What?”

Si smiles, not unkindly, and runs a hand through his neat, dark hair. “Am I the first person you’ve spoken to about this?”

“I don’t understand,” Fergus admits, feeling himself redden. “Yes? Who else – ?”

“Have you apologised to Adam?” Simon interrupts.

Fergus plummets wholeheartedly into miserable confusion. “Adam,” he echoes, slowly.

Si breathes in, breathes out, and visibly tries to keep his temper in check. “Never mind me,” Si answers, voice alarmingly calm. “I came into all this knowing full-well how you felt about him, stupid enough to think I might change it. What passed between us was – at least in some ways – our equal foolish responsibility. I’ll accept my part in it. But you treated Adam throughout in an appalling way, Fergus. It rendered you quite ugly. I didn’t require much more incentive to fall out of love with you than that.”

“I,” Fergus says. He can feel the colour draining from his face. He thinks he might be sick.

“And the worst thing is,” Si continues, ignoring him, “Is that I’m not even really sure you meant to do it.”

For a moment, Fergus can’t answer. “He’s never – he’s never said a thing.”

“Would you?” Simon replies, somewhat sharply. “He probably feels like you’ll ditch him again if he does. Have you asked him anything about his life while you were apart? Because from what I heard he fucked half of Westminster and spent the rest of his time off his head on coke and molly and god knows what else.”

“Adam wouldn’t do that,” Fergus says weakly. He feels bone-shakingly nauseous. “His father had a heart condition.”

Simon doesn’t dignify this with an answer. “I understand it must have taken quite a lot for you to bring yourself here today, Fergus, however misdirected your sincerity, and I am grateful for that. But for God’s sake stop acting like a wounded saint and grow up. He loves you to a frankly preposterous degree, and as little as I think of the man, even I don’t think he deserves this level of cruelty.”

Fergus swallows thickly. He has never in his entire life felt as abjectly humiliated, as abjectly in the wrong as this. It would never have occurred to him that Adam might need – everything at the time had felt reasonable, or at the very least not wholly unreasonable in the light of what Adam did to him. He’d been too furious, too miserable, too hurt to have any real sense of what he was truly doing, and, crucially, no Adam to stand beside him and gently say maybe let’s not, perhaps don’t –

Simon’s face gentles. He pushes away from the kitchen counter, walks around the table, and pulls Fergus into a brief, if warm, hug. “Cheer up. I know you’re not a total arse, and so does Adam. Go home and sort it out, alright?”

Fergus sniffles embarrassingly as Simon pulls away, and Si, consummate professional and kind as always, has the good grace to pretend he hasn’t heard it. Fergus unravels his scarf from where it’s knotted around his fists, drapes it around his neck, and heads for the exit; then he pauses in the doorway, hand on the jamb, and looks back at Simon. Si looks a little tired, a little happy, a little sad. He’s clever, and funny, and impossibly kind; it isn’t hard to remember in that moment quite how he’d fallen in love with him, or to be regretful for having lost him, yet again. “And we’re – ?”

“We’re alright, Fergus.” Si smiles, just a little, and tilts his head. “But I’m not entirely sure I ever want to see you again.”

 

  

Fergus’ hand is shaking when he turns the key in the lock. He’d left Adam listening to the Today programme and filling in _The Times_ crossword, only half-mentioning that he had some errands to run; he’s hit, almost with a deep melancholy, by the memory of waking up next to him that morning, looking up to find Adam propped up in bed against the pillows, glasses on his nose, squinting down mal-tempered at the newspaper as he tries to remember an eight-lettered synonym for stubborn.

They’re sharing Adam’s Shepherds Bush flat while the two of them negotiate something more permanent. Fergus hates it, the décor and the coldness and the knowledge that this is where Adam lived in the absence of him, everything that isolation came to entail. Now, Adam’s sprawled along the tastefully-grey sofa, scowling at a dreary policy profile littered with his characteristic – and heart-clenchingly familiar – purple marks, and it only further adds to the horror when he looks guilty at the sight of Fergus, like he’s been caught committing some heinous infidelity.

Fergus crosses the room, drops to his knees, grabs Adam’s neck, and kisses him. Adam’s breath is shaky when he pulls away, a soft hand running through Fergus’ thinning hair, and he smiles at him almost shyly. “What was that for?” he asks, gently incredulous.

“I went to see Si,” Fergus says, and watches with horror as Adam flinches, the colour draining from his face. “No, darling – it’s alright, I promise.” Fergus pulls in an unsteady breath, feels his own expression contort miserably. “I thought I’d fixed this,” he says, wretchedly. “I thought we were alright again.”

“What do you mean?” Adam asks, voice impossibly calm. “What did he say, Fergus?”

“He was such a bloody gentleman,” Fergus continues, almost angry, distracted momentarily by the memory. “You know how he is, he’s so – ”

“Fergus,” Adam interrupts, panic clearly twisting through his temper, “What did he _say_?”

“He said all sorts of things about you – taking drugs and feeling – trapped and – ” Adam’s face is completely white; Fergus’ brain, at last, catches up with the whole miserable exchange from his perspective. “He told me to apologise,” Fergus blurts, feeling himself redden. “He said I’d treated you terribly and you deserved an apology far more than he did. That’s why I was there, I mean. To say sorry.”

“Right.” Adam lets out a single, edgy breath. “That’s – right. You weren’t – you smell like him,” Adam adds quite suddenly, looking desolate and panicked.

Fergus clutches at his arm hard. “I got upset, he hugged me. It wasn’t – nothing like that, I promise – ”

“Right,” Adam says again. He swallows. “You – apologised.”

“Yes,” Fergus agrees, somewhat desperately. “It felt like something I should do. I didn’t say anything because I – I didn’t want you to get upset,” he adds, meekly.

“Right.” Adam scours his face with his hand. “Would you – would you have told me, if he hadn’t – ?”

Fergus shifts uncomfortably. “Probably not,” he admits in a mutter. “I thought it would – ”

“Yes. No. I – understand.” Adam drags in and out another shaking breath, tight between his teeth. “Fucking Christ, Fergus.” He’s trembling, Fergus realises; he can feel it from where his hand is still resting on Adam’s forearm. “I really fucking hate you, sometimes.”

Fergus winces. “I know. I’m sorry.” He remembers, then, what had been the instigation of all of this, what it is he’d come through the door meaning to say; he charges on, even as he hears his tone thicken with every sentence. “I’m sorry for this, and I’m sorry for – for everything, before. For what I made you do, and what I did to you. And for not trying more. I’m a coward and a shithead and what I did was – deeply rubbish. Even if I did only do some of it because – because I was furious with you,” he adds impulsively, after a brief, angry thought.

“You’re not a shithead,” Adam says, after a long, awful pause. His voice sounds rough at the edges, but Fergus can’t quite interpret the sentiment. “I’m – you’ve forgiven me, then?”

The question hits Fergus like a punch. Adam looks horribly young, horribly vulnerable when he asks it, and Fergus finds himself wondering how long he’s been treading around the edges of it, trying desperately to decipher the answer while being too afraid to overtly ask. “Of course,” Fergus says, wretched. “Christ, Adam, I thought that was obvious.”

Adam’s breathing shudders; his eyes slip shut for a moment, as if he can’t help it. “It wasn’t. It really fucking wasn’t.” His face crumples. “Fuck, I was so convinced – ”

“Don’t,” Fergus interrupts unsteadily, clutching at him very hard. “I love you, I’m _sorry_ , you’re – god, of course you’re fucking forgiven – ”

Adam kisses him, sharp and hard like a slap. “This is it, for me,” Adam says, once he’s recovered the breath to speak. “It always has been. I know I – I know I made a fucking mess of showing that, before. But it never stopped being true.”

Fergus thinks he’s starting to know that; it shouldn’t, really, have taken him this long. But it has, it did, and surely the – the ineptitude of it doesn’t matter now that he does, now that there’s something approaching an understanding between the two of them, a cemented basis of affection that neither of them, surely, after all this, can truly doubt.

Except –

“I said I was sorry,” Fergus says, in a small voice. “Do you – ”

“Yes,” Adam says instantly, with absolute, concrete certainty. He kisses Fergus again, pressing tight against him, and Fergus thinks it must be serious for him not to make the easy joke; _I thought that was obvious_.

Perhaps there’s too much supposition between them, Fergus decides. Too much time spent not saying things, thinking it unnecessary because Adam’s always seemed to know him before he’s even known himself. If that’s true, then it is, at the very least, an easy thing to fix. A damn sight easier than if Adam didn’t actually –

“I love you,” Adam says, as if he’s been rendered briefly telepathic. And for the very first time, Fergus honestly, completely, wholeheartedly believes him.

 

  

It’s never mattered much to Westminster what day it is, and some weeks it’s an achievement for them to so much as spend the weekend in the same location, even if Adam does pass the time scribbling angrily across poorly-worded policy reviews. Of course it was never a problem when the policies involved were Fergus’; but now Adam has to carefully maintain some kind of limit and Fergus has to make a diligent and conscious effort not to be crossly jealous.

Eventually, Adam concedes defeat and pings the pdf off to Helen, if only in an egalitarian hope that both of them has a half-ruined Saturday. Fergus had intended to spend the evening drifting off companionably in front of the telly; then Adam had leant over halfway through _A Question of Sport_ and murmured _I want you in me_ and Fergus, perhaps unsurprisingly, had found it rather hard to concentrate. He’d ridden Fergus there on the sofa, and then half-pushed, half-dragged Fergus into the bedroom and let himself be pinned and fucked, more desperate than Fergus ever thinks he’s seen him.

Now, Adam’s lying asleep beside him, one long soft line half-under the duvet, wearing a ratty t-shirt Fergus thinks might actually date back to uni. He looks both more tired and more young when he sleeps, which isn’t something Fergus remembers from before; but perhaps he never really noticed. Fergus wants, quite desperately, to ask about the drugs and the shagging, about all of it, but he also rather suspects he knows all the answers already.

“I can bloody hear you thinking,” Adam mutters from beside him, apparently less unconscious than he thought.

“Sorry,” Fergus murmurs. “Old habits.” He watches Adam’s eyes slide open. “Just couldn’t manage to nod off.”

Adam grunts a little in sympathy and shuffles closer, throws an arm over Fergus’ chest, and Fergus’ fingers find a place and a rhythm in Adam’s hair. He feels Adam’s breathing slow down, turn steady in time with the motion of Fergus’ hands, and he stares out of the crack in the curtains, out at the sliver of sky beyond. He’s thinking back through the years to 2009, to the choice he’d made to phone a man he’d met in a bar, so out of hope and out of options that even that foolishness had seemed somehow plausible – that that single moment led him to this, led him here. Led him, it seems, to the crux of the rest of his life.

Seemingly from nowhere, Adam stretches up and kisses him. “Stop it,” he chides, not unkindly. “Stop fucking mithering. Go to sleep.”

“I’m not,” Fergus promises quietly, and Adam rolls his eyes, lowers his head, and gives up.

I’m going to marry him, Fergus thinks, with an absolute and brilliant certainty. I’m going to spend the rest of my life watching him become old and cantankerous and even more perfect than I ever could imagine. The thought is like being speared by a sunbeam, impossibly warm and impossibly bright. All because they both got chucked out on their arses by the whim of the Caledonian mafia, all those years ago; that’s what this is, Fergus thinks, with a kind of meretricious glee. That’s what they are, what all of this has come to represent. The final death throes of Malcolm Tucker’s legacy.


End file.
